ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE POEMS OF 

LORD BYRON 





AMERICAN • BOOK • COMPANY 
JEW YORK- CINCINNATI • CHICAGO 



("mar 7 189i; 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, ! 



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Copyright No. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE POEMS OF 

/ 
LORD BYRON 



EDITED BY W. H. VENABLE, LL.D. 

OF THE WALNUT HILLS HIGH SCHOOL, CINCINNATI 



i 




NEW YORK • : • CINCINNATI • : • CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
1898 

^ TWO COPIES ft^EIVED 






Mha 



Copyright, 1898, by 
American Book Company. 



w. p. I 

/Z-3//33 • 



CONTENTS 



introduction 

List of Byron's Works 

Chronological Outline of Byron's Life . 

The Prisoner of Chillon 

Childe Harold's "Good Night" to his Native Land 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth 
Song of the Greek Bard, from " Don Juan 

Darkness 

The Destruction of Sennacherib 

To Thomas Moore 

When Coldness Wraps this Suffering Clay 
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-sixth Year 



PAGE 

7 

14 
15 
17 
33 
37 
84 

154 
160 

163 
165 
167 
169 



INTRODUCTION 



George Gordon, Lord Byron, born of unruly blood in a 
revolutionary age, was destined to lead revolutionary movements 
in both the political and the literary world. His ancestry, though 
noble, had in it a fierce, ungovernable strain. His adventur- 
ous grandfather, or, as Byron called him in verse, "granddad," 
was known to fame as " Foul-weather Jack ; " his father, " a 
handsome rake," bore the nickname of " Mad Jack; " and the 
poet's uncle, who in a fit of rage killed a neighbor, was distin- 
guished as the " Wicked Byron." Lord Byron's mother was vain, 
violent, passionate, yet fond,— an hysterical woman whose char- 
acter was a mixture of strength and weakness. She was of Scotch 
birth, with some blood royal of the Stuart family in her proud 
veins. Her maiden name was Gordon. 

" Mad Jack " Byron deserted his wife soon after the birth of 
their only child, George, who first saw the light in 1788, in the 
city of London. The abandoned mother removed with her child 
to Aberdeen, Scotland, where they resided about ten years, until, 
by the death of the " Wicked Byron," the boy inherited the title 
of baron and the large estates and feudal hall of Newstead 
Abbey. 

Though " Geordie " was sent to school irregularly, at Aberdeen 

7 



8 INTR OD UC TION. 

and elsewhere, his education was really neglected, and he learned 
neither to study nor to obey, but grew up a typical spoiled child. 
He did, indeed, get some lessons from the lofty mountain, " dark 
Lochnagar." On becoming a young lord, he was put under the 
care of a guardian. Lord Carlisle, who placed him in the public 
school of Harrow. The head master of this celebrated boys' 
school soon discovered in the thirteen-year-old lad " a wild moim- 
tain colt ; but there was mind in his eye'' The energy of Byron's 
mind in his school and college days was given more to general 
reading than to systematic study. It is recorded that he was a, 
poor penman and disliked mathematics, but acquired a fair knowl- 
edge of the classics, some French, and much Italian. His mas- 
tery of bodily accomplishments was admirable, considering the 
disadvantage he suffered from a deformity in his right foot, caus- 
ing a slight lameness. Notwithstanding this defect, Byron was 
a skillful a hlete, — could ride, row, swim, box, fence, and shoot 
better than most of his comrades. He shrank from the sports of 
the chase, not from timidity,— for his pets were dogs, bears, and 
wolves,— but because he hated all forms of cruelty. He was not 
a bully, neither would he be imposed upon, and he never could 
understand the submissive spirit. With true Scotch -English pluck, 
he fought his way from misery to victory, and this explains his 
saying : " I hated Harrow till the last year and a half, but then I 
liked it." 

From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, against 
his wish, for he wanted to go to Oxford. He was now a youth 
of seventeen, and his turbulent soul began to seek vent for its 
emotions in verse. A poet born, he wrote easily, naturally ; and 
the book he published in his nineteenth year, prettily called 
" Hours of Idleness," had in it as much thought and sentiment 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

as the author had thus far experienced in real Hfe. He took his 
degree in 1808, and went to London. 

His first poems were written for pleasure and from the stirrings 
of boyish ambition to win a name. His second venture had a 
very different motive and temper. The " Hours of Idleness " 
was severely criticised in the " Edinburgh Review," and Byron 
struck back fiercely in a satire called " Enghsh Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers," beginning with the audacious lines : 

" Prepare for rime : I'll publish, right or wrong; 
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song." 

The author afterwards saw that there was much more wrong 
than right in this literary challenge. 

The year after he left college, Byron made his first tour of the 
Continent, traveling two years in Spain, Albania, and Greece. 
On his return to England early in 1812, he pubhshed the first two 
cantos of " Childe Harold," a poem that was immediately recog- 
nized, even by his enemies, as a work of genius, though the poet 
himself was not aware of its excellence. Surprised at his own 
success, he wrote : " I awoke one morning and found myself fa- 
mous." His poetry stirred the heart of Europe. It thrilled 
London hke an electric shock. Byron, upon whom the Muse had 
bestowed a new lordship, was idolized by society. About four 
years of his life were spent in London and at Newstead Abbey, 
devoted to the excitements of fashionable life, the dissipations of 
pleasure, and the solace of literary composition. It was in^this 
period of conventional distinction that he wooed and won Miss 
Milbanke, who became Lady Byron in January, 181 5. 

The marriage, being one of convenience, not of love on either 
side, proved unhappy. Byron had many love affairs, none of 



I o INTRO D UCTION. 

them fortunate. It is truly said by one of his biographers, " He 
was the slave and the despot of women, their adorer and their 
contemner." Only a year elapsed from the time she became his 
wife until Lady Byron left her husband, taking with her their in- 
fant daughter. Byron said the causes of the separation were too 
simple to be explained, and they have never been explained to 
the satisfaction of the world. 

Byron was violently blamed in England, not only for his treat- 
ment of his wife, but for general dissolute conduct and for the 
audacity of his sentiments. Such was the revulsion of public 
feeling, so vehement was the outcry against him, that, as he after- 
wards wrote, he felt that if what was said were true he was unfit 
for England ; if false, England was unfit for him. Under the cir- 
cums ances his pride dictated but one course: on the 25th of 
April, 1 81 6, he quitted England, never to return. Only four 
years of his mature hfe had been passed in his native land. He 
was but twenty-eight years old when he set out on his second 
and final visit to southern Europe. 

He went in a rage against mankind. Now he had knowledge 
of life, good and bad, and now there was something real of which 
to write. He traveled in Switzerland and Italy, seeing all things 
vividly, thinking intensely, feeling profoundly, and pouring out 
his whole mind in eloquent verse. Never poet wrote more rapidly. 
By far the best of his poems were produced in Italy. At length, 
after six or seven years of varied experience, not free from licen- 
tiousness, he seemed to tire of himself, to weary of sensual delights, 
and even to lose interest in the poetic art. 

Political questions called his energies away from poetry to war. 
An ardent lover of liberty, he wished to promote the actual free- 
dom of oppressed nations. Not content to sin^ the imaginary 



IN TROD UC TION. 1 1 

song of a Greek bard, he felt a noble longing to aid with his 
money and his sword the Greek people in their struggle against 
the Turk. On the 4th of July, 1823, he sailed from Genoa to 
Greece, to join in an expedition against Lepanto. He was put in 
command of a division of troops, but did not live to lead it to 
battle. The great poet died of a fever at Missolonghi, three 
months after having completed his thirty-sixth year. His last 
words, spoken in delirium, were true to his nature: "Forward, 
forward! Follow me. Do not be afraid." Thus died the poet 
whose pen was a sword, and whose sword was as brave as his pen, 

Byron's political influence was considerable. Born just after 
the American Revolution, and just before the French, he breathed 
the quick atmosphere of his age. We may call him an aristocratic 
democrat. In theory he was one of the people. He admired 
Washington and American institutions. '' Give me a republic," 
he said when about to aid the Greek revolutionists. An English 
author calls him " the greatest modern preacher of ' liberty, equal- 
ity, and fraternity.' " 

But literature, not politics, was the realm in which his chief 
influence was exerted. Minto pronounces Byron " the greatest 
literary force of this century." Matthew Arnold, a cautious critic, 
says : " His name is still great and brilliant. Wordsworth and 
Byron stand out by themselves." In France and Germany Byron 
is greatly admired. In the United States he has ever been ap- 
preciated. He wrote of Daniel Boone and the West, and was 
proud of his audience in the Ohio Valley. "This is the first 
tidings that has sounded to me like fame, — to be redde on the 
banks of the Ohio," he wrote in his diary in 1813. 

Byron's poetry is by no means free from faults. It violates 
rnany rules of versification, and even of rhetoric and grammar, 



12 INTR OD UC TION. 

Nevertheless it takes high rank. Byron's poetry is Byron, his life, 
his passions,— an expression of superabundant energy, like his 
loves, his hatreds, his sports, his military enterprise. As fast as 
he lived he transmuted his life into written song. Every event gave 
rise to a lyric, a romance, or a drama. One critic thinks force and 
sincerity are the chief elements of Byron's poetry ; another says 
the main constituents are passion and wit. As for his style, at 
the best, perhaps no one has described it more happily than 
Swinburne, who says it is " at once swift and supple, light and 
strong, various and radiant." 

The selections in this book give a fair idea of Byron's genius 
and art. The first, " The Prisoner of Chillon," is an old favorite, 
not without cause. Though not in the author's usual vein, it 
shows his character in its gentlest and most serious mood. The 
piece was written at Ouchy, near Geneva, in two days, June 26, 
27, 1816. It is one of the best of Byron's romantic "tales," — a 
species of poem made popular by Scott, who ceased to produce 
such because, as he said, " Byron beat me." 

From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage " we give by far the best 
portion. Cantos III. and IV., the former describing Belgium and 
Switzerland, the latter Italy. The third canto was finished June 
27, 1 816, and went to press early in 181 7. The fourth was begun 
in June, 181 7, completed in December of the same year, and 
published in 181 8. Aside from their literary merit, these cantos 
possess high educational value, especially to the student of the 
classics, because they afford a delightful opportunity to review 
history and mythology and to impress important facts of topog- 
raphy, biography, literature, and art. Discussing the poetical 
worth of these cantos, Professor Nichol uses these strong words ; 



INTROD UC TION: 1 3 

" Cantos III. and IV. are separated from their predecessors, not 
by a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication Byron 
had only shown how far the force of rhapsody could go ; now he 
struck with his right hand and from the shoulder." A still subtler 
critic, Swinburne, after praising the concluding stanzas of the 
fourth canto, the apostrophe to the ocean, says discriminately : 
" No other passage in the fourth canto will bear to be torn out 
from the text ; and this one suffers by extraction. The other 
three cantos are more loosely built and less compact of fabric ; 
but in the first two there is little to remember or to praise." 

The text followed in these selections is that of the Oxford 
edition from the Oxford University Press, which is based upon 
the standard Murray edition. The notes, it is hoped, will not 
seem too many to the teacher nor too few for the independent 
student. The editor has made use of the researches of H. F. 
Tozer (Clarendon Press Series), of H. G. Keene (Bell's Classics), 
and of the American scholar, W. J. Rolfe, by permission. 

Only one pedagogical hint is here ventured, ahke to teacher and 
to pupil : avoid, in teaching or learning English poetry, the 
danger pointed out by Byron in Stanzas LXXV.-I.XXVII. of 
Canto IV., " Childe Harold." May the young reader both 
"comprehend" and "love" the verse. 



1 4 INTROD UCTION, 

LIST OF BYRON'S WORKS. 

Miscellaneous: 

Hours of Idleness (72 titles) ; Occasional Pieces (82 titles) ; 
Hebrew Melodies (23 titles) ; Domestic Pieces (63 titles) ; — 
in all 240 poems, among which are many beautiful lyrics. 

Satires : 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ; Hints from Horace ; 
The Curse of Minerva ; The Waltz ; The Age of Bronze ; 
The Blues : A Literary Eclogue ; The Vision of Judgment. 

Tales : 

The Giaour ; The Bride of Abydos ; The Corsair ; Lara ; 
The Siege of Corinth ; Parisina ; The Prisoner of Chillon ; 
Mazeppa ; The Island ; Beppo. 

Dramas : 

Manfred ; Marino Faliero ; Sardanapalus ; The Two Fos- 
cari ; Cain ; Heaven and Earth ; Werner ; The Deformed 

Transformed. 

# 

Unclassified : 

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ; Don Juan ; The Lament of 
Tasso ; The Prophecy of Dante ; The Morgante Maggiore 
of Pulci ; Francesca of Rimini. 

Some of the best of the longer poems, regarded from a literary 
standpoint, are "The Giaour," " Manfred," " Cain," "The Vision 
of Judgment," "Beppo," and " Don Juan." Of course "The 
Prisoner of Chillon " and " Childe Harold ' are considered mas- 
terpieces. 



IN TROD UCTION. 



15 



CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF BYRON'S LIFE. 



YEAR 
1788, 
1798. 
180I. 
1805. 
1807. 
1809, 
1809 
1812, 

1812 

1815, 

1816, 

1816, 

1816 

1823, 

1824, 



BYRON S AGE 



January 22. Byron was born in London 
Byron inherited his title and estate . 
Entered the boys' school at Harrow 
Entered Trinity College, Cambridge 
Published his " Hours of Idleness " 
July. Sailed for the Continent . 
to 181 1, July. Traveled in Spain, Greece, etc. 
February. Made his first speech in the House of 
Lords; published "Childe Harold," Cantos Land 11. 
to 1816. Was lionized in England. 

January. Married Miss Milbanke 27 

January. His wife separated from him 28 

April 25. Byron left England, never to return. . 
to 1823, July. Resided in Switzerland and in Italy. 

July 4. Sailed from Genoa for Greece 35 

April 19. Died at Missolonghi 36 



24 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 



SONNETi ON CHILLON. 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 

For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 5 

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 

Their country conquers with their martyrdom. 
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place. 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, 10 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard!^ May none those marks efface! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God.^ 

1 The last six lines of this noble introductory sonnet are thrillingly im- 
pressive. 

2 Frangois de Bonnivard, a magistrate and political writer of Geneva, 
suffered six years' imprisonment in Chillon for helping to defend the freedom 
of Geneva against the duke of Savoy. He was rescued by his countrymen, 
who captured the castle in the year 1536. This real hero must not be con- 
founded with the imaginary prisoner of the poetical tale. Byron himself 
wrote: " When this poem was composed I was not sufficiently aware of the 
history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavored to dignify the subject by 
an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues." 

3 " His [Byron's] sonnets are all good ; the best is that on Bonnivard, one 
of his noblest and completest poems " (SwiNBURNE). 

2 17 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

I. 

My hair is gray, but not with years, 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears : ^ 
My Hmbs are bowed, though not with toil, 5 

But rusted with a vile repose, 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are banned, and barred— forbidden fare; 10 

But this was for my father's faith 
I suffered chains and courted death ; 
That father perished at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 15 

In darkness found a dwelling place ; 
We were seven — who now are one, 

Six in youth, and one in age. 
Finished as they had begun, 

Proud of Persecution's rage ; 20 

One in fire, and two in field. 
Their belief with blood have sealed, 

1 Byron cites the case of Ludovico Sforza and of Marie Antoinette. Are 
there other instances? 

18 



THE PRISONER OE CHILLON. 1 9 

Dying as their father died, 

For the God their foes denied ; 

Three were in a dungeon cast, 25 

Of whom this wreck is left the last. 



II. 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mold. 

In Chillon's dungeons ^ deep and old, 

There are seven columns, massy and gray. 

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 30 

A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 

And through the crevice and the cleft 

Of the thick wall is fallen and left ; 

Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 

Like a marsh's meteor lamp : ^ 35 

And in each pillar there is a ring. 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing. 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away, 40 

Till I have done with this new day, 
Which now is painful to these eyes, 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 
I lost their long and heavy score, 45 

When my last brother drooped and died, 
And I lay living by his side. 

1 The deep old dungeon which suggested the poem is not so gloomy as the 
verses would indicate. Longfellow called it a'" delightful dungeon." " In 
the cells," wrote Byron, " are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half 
merged in the wall. In some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered. 
On the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces." 

2 A meteor is any atmospheric phenomenon. Marsh gas takes fire spon- 
taneously on coming in contact with oxygen. Byron's " meteor lamp " is the 



20 LORD BYRON, 



III. 



They chained us each to a column stone,^ 

And we were three — yet, each alone ; 

We could not move a single pace, 50 

We could not see each other's face, 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight : 

And thus together — yet apart, 

Fettered in hand, but joined in heart, 55 

'Twas still some solace, in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech. 

And each turn comforter to each 

With some new hope, or legend old, 60 

Or song heroically bold ; 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone. 

An echo of the dungeon stone, 

A grating sound, not full and free, 65 

As they of yore were wont to be : 

It might be fancy, but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 



IV. 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 70 

I ought to do — and did my best — 

And each did well in his degree. 

ignis fatuus or will-o'-the-wisp, the Jack-o'-lantern of superstition. (See Mil- 
ton's L' Allegro for " friar's lantern.") 

1 Byron's name, graved by his own hand, is on the central " column stone," 
the one to which Bonnivard was chained. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 21 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 
Because our mother's brow was given 
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven — 75 

For him my soul was sorely moved ; 
And truly might it be distressed 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 

(When day was beautiful to me 80 

As to young eagles, being ^ free) — 

A polar day ,2 which will not see 
A sunset till its summer's gone, 

Its sleepless summer of long light, 
The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 85 

And thus he was as pure and bright, 
And in his natural spirit gay. 
With tears for naught but others' ills. 
And then they flowed like mountain rills, 
Unless he could assuage the woe 90 

Which he abhorred to view below.^ 



V. 

The other was as pure of mind. 

But formed to combat with his kind ; 

Strong in his frame, and of a mood 

Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 95 

And perished in the foremost rank 

With joy:— but not in chains to pine: 
His spirit withered with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine: 100 

1 What does "being" modify, "me" or "eagles"? 

2 Why not a tropical day? 

3 What part of speech is " below "? Is the line good? 



2 2 LORD BYRON. 

But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those reHcs of a home so dear. 
He was a hunter of the hills, 

Had followed there the deer and wolf ; 

To him his dungeon was a gulf, 105 

And fettered feet the worst of ills. 

VI. 

Lake Leman ^ hes by Chillon's walls : 2 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
Thus much the fathom line was sent no 

From Chillon's snow-white battlement, 

Which round about the wave inthralls : 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made— and like a living grave 
Below the surface of the lake 115 

The dark vault lies v/herein we lay ,3 
We heard it ripple night and day ; 

Sounding o'er our heads it knocked ; 
And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 120 
And wanton in the happy sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rocked, 

And I have felt it shake, unshocked, 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 125 

1 Leman, ancient classic name for Lake Geneva. (See Childe Harold, 
Canto in. Stanza LXXXV. : " Clear, placid Leman!" etc.) 

^ " The lake has been fathomed to the depth of eight hundred feet, French 
measure. . . . The walls are white" (Byron). The castle with its loop- 
holed towers, once a ducal residence, was used as both fortress and state 
prison. Parts of the structure are said to be nearly one thousand years old. 
It is on an isolated rock at the east end of Lake Geneva. 

3 The dungeon is not below the surface of the lake. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 23 

VII. 

I said my nearer ^ brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart dechned, 
He loathed and put away his food ; 
It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, 
For we were used to hunter's fare, 130 

And for the Hke had httle care; 
The milk drawn from the mountain goat 
Was changed for water from the moat. 
Our bread was such as captives' tears 
Have moistened many a thousand years, 135 

Since man first pent his fellow-men 
Like brutes within an iron den ; 
But what were these to us or him? 
These wasted not his heart or limb ; 
My brother's soul was of that mold 140 

Which in a palace had grown cold, 
Had his free breathing been denied 
The range of the steep mountain's side ; 
But why delay the truth? — he died. 
I saw, and could not hold his head, 145 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, — 
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain. 
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 
He died, and they unlocked his chain, 
And scooped for him a shallow grave 150 

Even from the cold earth of our cave. 
I begged them as a boon to lay 
His corse in dust whereon the day 
Might shine — it was a fooHsh thought. 
But then within my brain it wrought, 155 

That even in death his freeborn breast 
In such a dungeon could not rest. 
1 Nearer in what, distance or age? 



24 LORD BYRON. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 

They coldly laughed, and laid him there : 

The flat and turfless earth above i6o 

The being we so much did love ; 

His empty i chain above it leant,i 

Such murder's fitting monument! 

VIII. 

But he, the favorite and the flower. 

Most cherished since his natal hour, 165 

His mother's image in fair face, 

The infant love of all his race, 

His martyred father's dearest thought, 

My latest care, for whom I sought 

To hoard my life, that his might be 170 

Less wretched now, and one day free ; 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired 2— 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 

Was withered on the stalk away.^ 175 

Oh, God! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : 

I've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I've seen it on the breaking ocean 180 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of Sin delirious with its dread ; 

But these were horrors — this -v^^as woe 

Unmixed with such*— but sure and slow: 185 

1 Note the inaccuracy of the words " empty " and " leant." Bonnivard's 
chain, about four feet in length, is preserved among the prison relics. 

2 Inspired by what? 

3 Why " on the stalk " rather than " ^the stalk "? 

* What does "such" modify? Compare this description with Halleck's 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 25 

He faded, and so calm and meek, 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak. 

So tearless, yet so tender, kind. 

And grieved for those he left behind ; 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190 

Was as a mockery of the tomb,i 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray ; 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright, 195 

And not a word of murmur, not 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 

A little talk of better days, 

A little hope my own to raise, 

For I was sunk in silence — lost 200 

In this last loss, of all the most ; 

And then the sighs he would suppress 

Of fainting nature's feebleness. 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less : 

I listened, but I could not hear; 205 

I called, for I was wild with fear ; 

I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread 

Would not be thus admonished ; 

I called, and thought I heard a sound 2— 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210 

And rushed to him :— I found him not, 

/ only stirred in this black spot, 

/ only lived, / only drew 

The accursed breath of dungeon dew ; ^ . 

The last, the sole, the dearest hnk 215 

Between me and the eternal brink, 

lines on modes of death in the poem " Marco Bozzaris : " " Come to the bri- 
dal chamber, Death!" etc. 

1 Comment on this line. 2 Scan this line. 

3 What is "dungeon dew"? 



26 LORD BYRON. 

Which bound me to my failing race, 

Was broken in this fatal place. 

One on the earth, and one beneath i — 

My brothers — both had ceased to breathe: 220 

I took that hand which lay so still, 

Alas! my own was full as chill; 

I had not strength to stir, or strive, 

But felt that I was still alive— 

A frantic feeHng, when we know 225 

That what we love shall ne'er be so. 

I know not why 

I could not die, 
I had no earthly hope but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. 230 

IX. 

What next befell me then and there 
I know not well — I never knew— 

First came the loss of light, and air, 
And then of darkness too : 

I had no thought, no feeling — none — 235 

Among the stones I stood a stone. 

And was, scarce conscious what I wist. 

As shrubless crags within the mist ; - 

For all was blank, and bleak, and gray ; 

It was not night, it was not day ; 240 

It was not even the dungeon light, 

So hateful to my heavy sight. 

But vacancy absorbing space,^ 

And fixedness without a place ; 

1 Study carefully lines 216-219. Are they clear? What is " the eternal 
brink "? 

2 Can you conceive this image? 

^ Try to imagine " vacancy absorbing space." 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 27 

There were no stars, no earth, no time, 245 

No check, no change, no good, no crime, 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of hfe nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness. 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! 250 



X. 

A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird ; 
It ceased, and then it came again, 

The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 255 

Ran over with the glad surprise. 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery ; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track ; 260 

I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before, 
I saw the gHmmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done. 
But through the crevice where it came 265 

That bird was perched,^ as fond and tame. 

And tamer than upon the tree ; 
A lovely bird, with azure wings, 
And song that said a thousand things. 

And seemed to say them all for me! 270 

I never saw its like before, 
I ne'er shall see its likeness more : 
It seemed like me to want a mate, 
But was not half so desolate, 

1 How could the bird be perched through a crevice? 



28 LORD BYRON. 

And it was come to love me when 275 

None lived to love me so again, 

And cheering from my dungeon's brink, 

Had brought me back to feel and think. 

I know not if it late were free, 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280 

But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 
A visitant from Paradise ; 

For — Heaven forgive that thought! the while 285 
Which made me both to weep and smile — 
I sometimes deemed that it might be 
My brother's soul come down to me ; 
But then at last away it flew. 

And then 'twas mortal well I knew, 290 

For he would never thus have flown, 
And left me twice so doubly lone. 
Lone as the corse within its shroud. 
Lone as a solitary cloud,— 

A single cloud on a sunny day, 295 

While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 

XL 

A kind of change came in my fate, 300 

My keepers grew compassionate ; 

I know not what had made them so,^ 

They were inured to sights of woe, 

But so it was: — my broken chain 

With links unfastened did remain, 305 

1 Does the reader know what had made them so? 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. '29 

And it was liberty to stride 

Along my cell from side to side, 

And up and down, and then athwart, 

And tread it over every part ; 

And round the pillars one by one, 310 

Returning where my walk begun, 

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod ; 

For if I thought with heedless tread 

My step profaned their lowly bed, 315 

My breath came gaspingly and thick, 

And my crushed heart fell blind and sick. 

XII. 

I made a footing in the wall, 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all 320 

Who loved me in a human shape ; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child, no sire, no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery; 325 

I thought of this, and I was glad. 
For thought of them had made me mad ; 
But I was curious to ascend 
To my barred windows, and to bend 
Once more, upon the mountains high, 330 

The quiet of a loving eye.^ 

XIII. 

I saw them, and they were the same,^ 
They were not changed like me in frame ; 

1 This is much in the spirit of Wordsworth. 

2 Many a tourist climbs to the loopholes of the dungeon, as the prisoner 



30 LORD BYRON. 

\ I saw their thousand years of snow 

On high— their wide long lake below, 335 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channeled rock and broken bush ; 

I saw the white-walled distant town, 

And whiter sails go skimming down ; 340 

And then there was a little isle, 

Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle, it seemed no more, 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 345 

But in it there were three tall trees. 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze. 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing, 

Of gentle breath and hue. 350 

The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seemed to fly ; 355 

And then new tears came in my eye, 
And I felt troubled— and would fain 
I had not left my recent chain ; 
And when I did descend again, 
The darkness of my dim abode 360 

Fell on me as a heavy load ; 

did and as Byron did, to view the scene here described. The poet tells us 
in prose : ' ' The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve. 
On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of 
Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and Saint-Gingo. Near it, on 
a hill, behind, is a torrent. ..." Not far from Chillon is a very small island, 
the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake. It con- 
tains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and di- 
minutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view." 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 31 

It was as is a new-dug grave, 

Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 

And yet my glance, too much oppressed, 

Had almost need of such a rest. 365 

XIV. 

It might be months, or years, or days, 

I kept no count, I took no note, 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
At last men came to set me free ; 370 

I asked not why, and recked not where ; 
It was at length the same to me. 
Fettered or fetterless to be, 

I learned to love despair. 
And thus when they appeared at last, 375 

^And all my bonds aside were cast, 
These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage— and all my own! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from a second home : 380 

With spiders I had friendship made. 
And watched them in their sullen trade. 
Had seen the mice by moonhght play, 
And why should I feel less than they? 
We were all inmates of one place, 385 

And I, the monarch of each race. 
Had power to kill— yet, strange to tell! 
In quiet we had learned to dwell ; 
My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 390 

To make us what we are: — even I 
Regained my freedom with a sigh. 



32 LORD BYRON. 



QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR 
THE STUDENT. 

In what historical period are the events of this poem supposed 
to occur? In what lands? 

What probably was the religious faith of the prisoners? 

Describe the meter of the poem. Is it suited to such a tale? 
What other poets used the same metrical form? 

Pick out the most poetical passages. 

Part IX. is much admired by critics : can you discover its su- 
perior merit? 

Observe the exquisite tenderness of Part X. 

Which lines show Byron's susceptibility to humane emotions? 
To nature's influence? 

Compare, as to body and as to mind, the two brothers who 
died in prison. 

What evidence of their superstitious tendency do the prisoners 
betray? 

It might prove interesting to the reader to compare with this 
celebrated poem other pieces of literature dealing with the sorrow 
and heroism of human captivity. Read Surrey's lines on his im- 
prisonment in Windsor, Sir R. L'Estrange's " Loyalty Confined," 
and R. Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison; " also Scott's de- 
scription of a dungeon in " Marmion." In prose, every school- 
boy should read " My Prisons," by Silvio Pellico, and " Picciola," 
by Santaine. 



CHILDE HAROLD'S "GOOD NIGHT "i TO HIS 
NATIVE LAND. 



Adieu, adieu! my native shore 

Fades o'er the waters blue ; 
The night winds sigh, the breakers roar. 

And shrieks the wild sea mew. 
Yon sun that sets upon the sea 

We follow in his flight ; 
Farewell awhile to him and thee, 

My native Land — Good Night! 



A few short hours and he will rise 

To give the morrow birth ; lo 

And I shall hail the main and skies, 

But not my mother earth. 
Deserted is my own good hall, 

Its hearth is desolate ; 
Wild weeds are gathering on the wall ; 1 5 

My dog howls at the gate. 

1 This lyric is from the first canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, published 
in 1812, when the author was but twenty-four. Byron tells us it " was sug- 
gested by Lord Maxwell's Good Night, in the Border Minstrelsy, edited by 
Mr. Scott." 

.^ 33 



34 LORD BYRON. [canto i. 

3- 

"Come hither, hither, my Httle pagel^ 

Why dost thou weep and wail? 
Or dost thou dread the billows' rage. 

Or tremble at the gale? 20 

But dash the tear-drop from thine eye ; 

Our ship is swift and strong : 
Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly 

More merrily along." 



" Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high, 25 

I fear not wave nor wind : 
Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I 

Am sorrowful in mind ; 
For I have from my father gone, 

A mother whom I love, 30 

And have no friend, save these alone. 

But thee — and one above. 



** My father blessed me fervently. 

Yet did not much complain ; 
But sorely will my mother sigh 35 

Till I come back again." — 
" Enough, enough, my little lad! 

Such tears become thine eye ; 
If I thy guileless bosom had, 

Mine own would not be dry. 40 

1 Robert Rushton, the son of one of Lord Byron's tenants. " I like him," 
wrote Byron to the lad's mother, " because, like myself, he seems a friendless 
animal." 



CANTO I.] CHJLDE HAROLD. 35 

6. 

" Come hither, hither, my stanch yeoman, ^ 

Why dost thou look so pale? 
Or dost thou dread a French foeman? - 

Or shiver at the gale? " — 
" Deem'st thou I tremble for my life ? 45 

Sir Childe, I'm not so weak ; 
But thinking on an absent wife 

Will blanch a faithful cheek. 



*' My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall, 

Along the bordering lake, 50 

And when they on their father call, A 

What answer shall she make? " — 
" Enough, enough, my yeoman good, 

Thy grief let none gainsay ; 
But I, who am of hghter mood, 55 

Will laugh to flee away." 

8. 

For who would trust the seeming sighs 

Of wife or paramour? 
Fresh feres ^ will dry the bright blue eyes 

We late saw streaming o'er. 60 

For pleasures past I do not grieve. 

Nor perils gathering near ; 
My greatest grief is that I leave 

No thing that claims a tear.* 

1 William Fletcher, Byron's faithful valet, who served the poet for twenty 
years and was with him when he died at Missolonghi in 1824. 

2 Were the French foemen of the English in 1809? 

3 " Fere," a consort or companion. 

4 Byron wrote to his mother in June, 1809 : " The world is all before me, 



36 LORD BYRON. [canto i. 

9- 

And now I'm in the world alone, 65 

Upon the wide, wide sea : 
But why should I for others groan, 

When none will sigh for me? 
Perchance my dog will whine in vain. 

Till fed by stranger hands ; 70 

But long ere I come back again 

He'd tear me where he stands. 



10. 

With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go 
i Athwart the foaming brine ; 

Nor care what land thou bear'st me to, 75 

So not again to mine. 
Welcome, welcome, ye dark-blue waves! 

And when you fail my sight, 
Welcome, ye deserts and ye caves! 

My native Land— Good Night! 80 

and I leave England without regret, and without a wish to revisit anything it 
contains, except yourself." 



CHILDE^ HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. 



CANTO THE THIRD.2 



" Afin que cette application vous for9at de penser a autre chose ; il n'y a en 
verite de remede que celui-R et le temps." 3 — Lettre du Roi de Prusse a 
D'' Alembert, September']^ iTjd. 

I. 

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! 
Ada!* sole daughter of my house and heart? 
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled. 
And then we parted, — not as now we part, 
But with a hope. — 

Awaking with a start, 5 

The waters heave around me ; and on high 
The winds lift up their voices : I depart, 
Whither I know not ; but the liour's gone by, 
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye, 

1 The word " childe," in old poetical usage, means a noble youth, as 
Childe Waters, Childe Childers. (See Shakespeare's line in Lear, iii. iv., 
where Edgar sings : "Childe Rowland to the dark tower came.") Byron 
first called his hero Childe Btirun, an early form of his own family name. 

2 See Introduction, p. 9, for an account of Cantos I. and II. 

3 Translate this French motto, and explain how it applies to Byron's 
personal history. 

* Augusta Ada Byron (born December 10, 1815) was but five weeks old 

37 



38 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

II. 

Once more upon the waters I^ yet once more! 10 

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed 
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar! 
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead ! 
Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed, 
And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, 15 

Still must I on ; for I am as a weed, 
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail 
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. 

III. 

In my youth's summer I did sing of One,^ 
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind ; 20 

Again I seize the theme, then but begun, 
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind 
Bears the cloud onwards : in that Tale I find 
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, 
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, 25 

O'er which all heavily the journeying years 
Plod the last sands of life, — where not a flower appears. 



IV. 

Since my young days of passion — joy, or pain, 
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string, 

when her father saw her for the last time. On January 5, 18 16, he wrote to 
the poet Tom Moore : " She was and is very flourishing and fat, and reckoned 
very large for her days,— squalls and sucks incessantly." Byron's daughter 
married the earl of Lovelace in 1835, and died in 1852. 

1 Byron left England, April 25, 1816, never to return. He made his first 
foreign tour in i8oq-i8io. 

2 Childe Harold. 



CANTO III.] CHILD E HAROLD. 39 

And both may jar: it may be, that in vain 30 

I would essay as I have sung to sing. 
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I ding ; 
So that it wean me from the weary dream 
Of selfish grief or gladness — so it fling 
Forgetfulness around me — it shall seem 35 

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme. 



He who, grown aged in this world of woe. 
In deeds, not years, ^ piercing the depths of life, 
So that no wonder waits him ; nor below 
Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, 40 

Cut to his heart again with the keen knife 
Of silent, sharp endurance : he can tell 
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife 
With airy images, and shapes which dwell 
Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul's haunted cell. 45 

VI. 

'Tis to create, and in creating hve 
A being more intense, that we endow 
With form our fancy, gaining as we give 
The life we image, even as I do now.^ 
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou, 50 

Soul of my thought ! with whom I traverse earth, 
Invisible but gazing, as I glow 
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth, 
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth. 

1 " We live in deeds, not years " (Bailey's Festus). 

2 The poet finds refuge from the troubles of life in the exercise of literary 
imagination. Longfellow sings of " the rapture of creating." Byron's ideal, 
the " soul of his thought," was superior to his actual self. 



40 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

VII. 

Yet must I think less wildly: — I have thought 55 

Too long and darkly, till my brain became, 
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, 
A whirhng gulf of fantasy and flame : 
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, 
My springs of hfe were poisoned.^ 'Tis too late! 60 

Yet am I changed ; though still enough the same 
In strength to bear what time cannot abate. 
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate. 

VIII. 

Something too much of this:^ — but now 'tis past. 
And the spell closes with its silent seal. 65 

Long-absent Harold reappears at last; 
He of the breast which fain no more would feel. 
Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal ; 
Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him 
In soul and aspect as in age : years steal 70 

Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb ; 
And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim. 

IX. 

His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found 

The dregs were wormwood ; but he filled again, 

And from a purer fount,^ on holier ground,^ 75 

And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain! 

^ This refers bitterly to the author's neglected childhood. He blames 
circumstances. 2 See Hamlet, iii. ii. 

3 What "fount" on what "holier ground"? Seek the answer in the 
stanzas following. The first sixteen stanzas are introductory and largely 
egotistical, 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 41 

Still round him clung invisibly a chain 
Which galled forever, fettering though unseen, 
And heavy, though it clanked not ; worn with pain, 
Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, 80 

Entering with every step he took through many a scene. 

X. 

Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed 
Again in fancied safety with his kind, 
And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed 
And sheathed with an invulnerable mind, 85 

That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind ; 
And he, as one, might 'midst the many stand 
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find 
Fit speculation ; such as in strange land 
He found in wonder works of God and Nature's hand. 90 

XI. 

But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek 
To wear it? who can curiously behold 
The smoothness and the sheen ^ of beauty's cheek. 
Nor feel the heart can never alP grow old? 
Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold 95 

The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb? 
Harold, once more within the vortex, rolled 
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time, 
Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond ^ prime. 

XII. 

But soon he knew himself the most unfit 100 

Of men to herd with Man ; with whom he held 

1 Look up the word " sheen " in your dictionary. " The sheen on their 
spears was like stars on the sea " (Byron), 

2 Altogether, 3 Foolish, 



42 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

Little in common ; untaught to submit 
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled 
In youth by his own thoughts ; still uncompelled, 
He would not yield dominion of his mind 105 

To spirits against whom his own rebelled ; 
Proud though in desolation ; which could find 
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind. 

XIII. 

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends ; 
Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; no 

Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, 
He had the passion and the power to roam ; 
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam. 
Were unto him companionship ; they spake 
A mutual language, clearer than the tome 115 

Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake 
For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake, 

XIV. 

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars. 
Till he had peopled them with beings bright 
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, 120 
And human frailties, were forgotten quite : 
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight, 
He had been happy ; but this clay will sink 
Its spark immortal, envying it the light 
To which it mounts, as if to break the link 125 

That keeps us from yon heaven which wooes us to its brink. ^ 

XV. 

But in Man's dwellings he became a thing 
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, 
1 See Prisoner of Chillon, line 216. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 43 

Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipped wing, 
To whom the boundless air alone were home: 130 

Then came his fit again, ^ which to overcome, 
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat 
His breast and beak against his wiry dome 
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat 
Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat. 135 

XVI. 

Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again, 
With naught 'of hope left, but with less of gloom; 
The very knowledge that he lived in vain. 
That all was over on this side the tomb, 
Had made Despair a smilingness assume, 140 

Which, though 'twere wild, — as on the plundered wreck 
When mariners would madly meet their doom 
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,— 
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check. ^ 

XVII. 

Stop! ^— for thy tread is on an Empire's dust! 145 

An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchered below! 
Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?^ 
Nor column trophied for triumphal show? 

1 See Macbeth, iii. iv. 

2 " In the first sixteen stanzas there is a mighty but groaning burst of 
dark and appalling strength" (Sir Egerton Brydges). "These stanzas 
—in which the author, adopting more distinctly the character of Childe 
Harold than in the original poem, assigns the cause why he has resumed his 
pilgrim's staff when it was hoped he had sat down for life, a denizen of his 
native country — abound with much moral interest and poetical beauty." Let 
the pupil point out passages characterized by moral interest or poetical beauty. 

3 Mark the abrupt transition,— like a sudden drumbeat. The next twelve 
powerful stanzas show Byron's genius at its best. 

4 A monument now marks the field of Waterloo. 



44 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

None ; but the morars truth tells simpler so, 
As the ground was before, thus let it be; — 150 

How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! 
And is this all the world has gained by thee, 
Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory? 

XVIII. 

And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,^ 
The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo! 155 

How in an hour the power which gave annuls 
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too! 
In " pride of place " - here last the eagle flew, 
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain. 
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through ; 160 

Ambition's life and labors all were vain ; 
He wears the shattered links of the world's broken chain. 

XIX.3 

Fit retribution ! Gaul may champ the bit 
And foam in fetters ; — but is Earth more free? 
Did nations combat to make O^ie submit ; 165 

Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty ? 
What! shall reviving Thraldom again be 
The patched-up idol of enHghtened days?* 
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we 
Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze 170 

And servile knees to thrones? No ; proi^e before ye praise! 

1 Byron visited the field of Waterloo a year after the battle had been 
fought. 

2 " * Pride of place ' is a term of falconry and means the highest pitch of 
flight " (Byron). 

3 Determine the metaphorical force of " Gaul," " Earth," " One," " Thral- 
dom," " Lion," and " Wolf" in this stanza. 

* " Upon the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander I. of Russia organized the 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 45 

XX. 

If not, o'ci one fallen despot boast no more! 
In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears 
For Europe's flowers long rooted up before 
The trampler of her vineyards ; in vain years 175 

Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears, 
Have all been borne, and broken by the accord 
Of roused-up milhons : all that most endears 
Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword 
Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant lord.i 180 

XXI. 

There was a sound of revelry by night,^ 
And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 185 

Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell ; 
But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell ! 

XXII. 

Did ye not hear it? — No ; 'twas but the wind, 190 

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 

Holy Alliance, a league embracing Russia, Austria, and Prussia. But the 
Holy Alliance very soon became practically a league for the maintenance of 
absolute principles of government in opposition to the liberal tendencies of 
the age" (Dr. P. V. N. Myers). 

1 " When Hippias and Hipparchus, sons of Pisistratus, were tyrants of 
Athens, two friends, Harmodius and Aristogiton, conspired against them, and 
killed Hipparchus with daggers concealed in the myrtle branches which they 
carried" (H. F. Tozer's Childe Harold). 

2 There was a ball at Brussels on the night of June 15, 181 5. The battle 



46 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined ; 
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet 
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet— 
But hark! —that heavy sound breaks in once more, 195 
As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! 
Arm! Arm! it is— it is— the cannon's opening roar! 

XXIII. 

Within a windowed niche of that high hall 
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain;^ he did hear 200 

That sound the first amidst the festival, 
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear ; 
And when they smiled because he deemed it near, 
His heart more truly knew that peal too well 
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, 205 

And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell; 
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. 

XXIV. 

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro. 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 210 

Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated : who could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 215 

Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! 

of Quatre Bras was fought June 16, and that of Waterloo proper on the i8th. 
Read some good history of these great events. 

1 The duke of Brunswick fell at Quatre Bras ; his father was killed at Jena 
in 1806. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 47 

XXV. 

And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, 
Went pouring fo'-vvard with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; , 220 

And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ; 
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering, with white lips—" The foe! They come! 

they come! " 225 

XXVI. 

And wild and high the " Cameron's gathering " 1 rose! 
The war note of Lochiel,- which Albyn's ^ hills 
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: — 
How in the noon of night that pibroch * thrills, 
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills 230 
Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers 
With the fierce native daring which instills 
The stirring memory of a thousand years, 
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears ! ^ 

XXVII. 

And Ardennes^ waves above them her green leaves, 235 
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 

1 A Scottish dan. 

2 Lochiel, chief of the clan. (See Lochiel's Warning, by Campbell.) 

3 The old Gaelic name of Scotland. 

4 Martial music of the bagpipe. 

5 "Sir Evan Cameron, and his descendant Donald, the ' gentle Lochiel' 
of the ' forty-five ' " (Byron). 

6 The wood of Soignies, not far from the Belgian forest of Ardennes, but 



48 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 
Over the unreturning brave, — alas! 
Ere evening to be trodden Hke the grass 
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow 240 

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of hving valor, rolling on the foe 
And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low. 



XXVIII. 

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, 
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 245 

The midnight brought the signal sound of strife. 
The morn the marshaling in arms, — the day 
Battle's magnificently stern array! 
The thunderclouds close o'er it, which when rent 
The earth is covered thick with other clay, 250 

Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent. 
Rider and horse,— friend, foe, — in one red burial blent! 

XXIX. 

Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine : 1 

Yet one I would select from that proud throng, 

Partly because they blend me with his line, '255 

And partly that I did his sire ^ some wrong, 

And partly that bright names will hallow song ; ^ 

And his was of the bravest, and when showered 

not, as Byron supposed, identical with the Arden of Shakespeare's As You 
Like It, which is in England. 

1 In compliment to Scott and others. 

2 The "sire" was Lord Carlisle, Byron's guardian, whose writing is 
called, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, "the paralytic puling of 
Carlisle." 

^ This is the first double dissyllabic rime in the poem. 



CANT9 III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 49 

The death bolts deadhest the thinned files along, 
Even where the thickest of war's tempest lowered, 260 

They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant 
Howard ! ^ 

XXX. 

There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee. 
And mine were nothing, had I such to give ; 
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree. 
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live, 265 

And saw around me the wide field revive 
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring 
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive, 
With all her reckless birds upon the wing, 
I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.2 270 

XXXI. 

I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each 
And one as all a ghastly gap did make 
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach 
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake ; 
The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake 275 

Those whom they thirst for ; though the sound of Fame 
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake 
The fever of vain longing, and the name 
So honored but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim. 

XXXII. 



They mourn, but smile at length ; and, smiling. 

The tree will wither long before it fall ; 

The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn ; 



2«0 



1 Major Frederick Howard, whose grave Byron visited. 

2 Professor E. H. Keene calls attention to the " exquisite couplet which 
concludes this stanza." Find the most felicitous touch in the two lines. 



50 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

The rooftree sinks, but molders on the hall 
In massy hoariness ; the ruined wall 

Stands when its wind- worn battlements are gone ; 285 

The bars survive the captive they enthrall ; 
The day drags through, though storms keep out the sun ; 
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on : 1 

XXXIII. 

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass 
In every fragment multiplies ; and makes 290 

A thousand images of one that was, 
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks ; 
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes, 
Living in shattered guise ; and still, and cold, 
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches, 295 

Yet withers on till all without is old, 
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.^ 

XXXIV. 

There is a very hfe in our despair. 
Vitality of poison, — a quick root 

Which feeds these deadly branches ; for it were 300 

As nothing did we die ; but Life will suit 
Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit. 
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,^ 
All ashes to the taste : Did man compute 
Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er 305 

Such hours 'gainst years of life, — say, would he name three- 
score? 

1 Observe the metaphors in Stanza XXXII., and how they describe 
lingering grief. 

'^ The simile of the broken mirror has been much admired and praised. 
Read it attentively. 

3 " The (fabled) apples on the brink of the lake Asphaltes were said to 
be fair without, and within ashes " (Byron). 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 51 

XXXV. 

The Psalmist numbered out the years of man : ^ 
They are enough ; and if thy tale - be true^ 
Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span, 
More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo! 310 

MiUions of tongues record thee, and anew 
Their children's hps shall echo them, and say — 
" Here, where the sword united nations drew, 
Our countrymen were warring on that day!" 
And this is much, and all which will not pass away. 315 

XXXVI. 

There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,^ 
Whose spirit, antithetically mixed, 
One moment of the mightiest, and again 
On little objects with hke firmness fixed ; 
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt, 320 

Thy throne had still been thine, or never been ; 
For daring made thy rise as fall : thou seek'st 
Even now to reassume the imperial mien. 
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene! 

XXXVII. 

Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou! 325 

She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name 

Was ne'er more bruited * in men's minds than now 

That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame, 

Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became 

The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert 330 

1 " The days of our years are threescore years and ten " (Ps. xc. 10). 

2 ' Tale " means what? 

3 Stanzas XXXVI. -XLI. give Byron's ideas of Napoleon. 

* Reported. " Thou art no less than fame hath bruited" (I. Henry VI., 
ii. i.). 



52 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

A god unto thyself ; nor less the same 
To the astounded kingdoms all inert, 
Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert. 

XXXVIII. 

Oh, more or less than man— in high or low. 
Battling with nations, flying from the field; 335 

Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now 
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield ; 
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild, 
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor. 
However deeply in men's spirits skilled, 340 

Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war, 
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star. 

XXXIX. 

Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide 
With that untaught innate philosophy, 

Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride, 345 

Is gall and wormwood to an enemy. 
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by. 
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled 
With a sedate and all-enduring eye ; — 
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favorite child, 350 

He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.^ 

XL. 

Sager than in thy fortunes ; for in them 

Ambition steeled thee on too far to show 

That just habitual scorn, which could contemn 

Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so 355 

1 Byron admired fortitude. 



:anto III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 53 

To wear it ever on thy lip and brow, 
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use 
Till they were turned unto thine overthrow : 
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose ; 
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose. 360 

XLI. 

If, like a tower upon a headland rock,i 
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone, 
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock ; 
But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne. 
Their admiration thy best weapon shone ; 365 

The part of Phihp's son was thine, not then 
(Unless aside thy purple had been thrown) 
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men ; 
For sceptered cynics earth were far too wide a den.^ 

XLII.3 

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, 370 

And there hath been thy bane ; there is a fire 
And motion of the soul which will not dwell 
In its own narrow being, but aspire 
Beyond the fitting medium of desire ; 

And, but once kindled quenchless evermore, 375 

Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire 
Of aught but rest ; a fever at the core, 
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore. 

1 Steep. 

2 " The great error of Napoleon," says Byron, " was a continued obtrusion 
ys\ mankind of his want of all community of feeling for or with them." 
Diogenes, in his tub, may mock at men, but Alexander, if he wishes to rule 
:he world, cannot afford to be a cynic. 

3 This and the two following stanzas form an interesting poetical study of 
imbition, a passion to which Byron himself was not a stranger. The lines 
are strong and suggestive. 



54 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

XLIII. 

This makes the madmen who have made men mad 
By their contagion : Conquerors and Kings, 380 

Founders of sects and systems, to whom add 
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things 
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, 
And are themselves the fools to those they fool ; 
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings 385 

Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school 
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule : 

XLIV. 

Their breath is agitation, and their Hfe 
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last, 
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, 390 

That should their days, surviving perils past, 
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast 
With sorrow and supineness, and so die ; 
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to w^aste 
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by, 395 

Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously. 

XLV.i 

He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find 
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow ; 
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, 
Must look down on the hate of those below. 400 

Though high above the sun of glory glow, 
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread. 
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow 
Contending tempests on his naked head. 
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. 405 
1 Point out the fallacy in this stanza. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 55 

XLVI. 

Away with these! true Wisdom's world will be 
Within its own creation, or in thine, 
Maternal Nature I^ for who teems like thee, 
Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine? - 
There Harold gazes on a work divine, 410 

A blending of all beauties ; streams and dells, 
Fruit, fohage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, 
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells 
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.^ 

XLVII. 

And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind, 415 

Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, 
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,* 
Or holding dark communion with the crowd. 
There was a day when they were young and proud ; 
Banners on high, and battles passed below; 420 

But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, 
And those which waved are shredless dust ere now, 
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow. 

XLVIII. 

Beneath these battlements, within those walls. 

Power dwelt amidst her passions ; in proud state 425 

Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, 

Doing his evil will, nor less elate 

1 " The transition from the subject of Napoleon to that of the Rhine is 
made by contrasting ambition with the love of nature " (Tozer). 

2 What literature pertaining to the Rhine have you read? 

3 Observe the force and beauty of the last four lines. 

4 Blowing through crannies. Recall Tennyson's Flower in the Cran- 
nied WalL 



56 LORD BYRON. [cAxXto hi. 

Than mightier heroes of a longer date. 
What want these outlaws conquerors should have ^ 
But History's purchased page to call them great? 430 

A wider space, an ornamented grave? 
Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave. 

XLIX. 

In their baronial feuds and single fields, 
What deeds of prowess unrecorded died! 
And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields, 435 

With emblems well devised by amorous pride, 
Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide ; 
But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on 
Keen contest and destruction near allied. 
And many a tower for some fair mischief won, 440 

Saw the discolored Rhine beneath its ruin run. 



L. 

But Thou, exulting and abounding river! 
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow 
Through banks whose beauty would endure forever, 
Could man but leave thy bright creation so, 445 

Nor its fair promise from the surface mow 
With the sharp scythe of conflict,— then to see 
.Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know 
Earth paved hke Heaven ; and to seem such to me, 449 
Even now what wants thy stream?— that it should Lethe be.- 

1 " ' What wants that knave that a king should have ? ' was King James's 
question on meeting Johnny Armstrong and his followers in full accouter- 
ments " (Byron). 

2 The Rhine would seem heavenly if, like Lethe, it could cause forget- 
fulness of the past. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 57 



LI.i 

A thousand battles have assailed thy banks, 
But these and half their fame have passed away, 
And Slaught^fcheaped on high his weltering ranks ; 
Their very graves are gone, and what are they? 
Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday, 455 

And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream 
Glassed, with its dancing light, the sunny ray ; 
But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream 
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem. 



LII. 

Thus Harold inly said, and passed along, 460 

Yet not insensible to all which here 
Awoke the jocund birds to early song 
In glens which might have made even exile dear : 
Though on his brow were graven lines austere, 
And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place 465 

Of feelings fierier far but less severe, 
Joy was not always absent from his face, 
But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace. 



LIII. 

Nor was all love shut from him, though his days 

Of passion had consumed themselves to dust. 470 

It is in vain that we would coldly gaze 

On such as smile upon us ; the heart must 

Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust 

Hath weaned it from all worldlings : thus he felt, 

1 A fine stanza, musical and impressive. 



58 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

For there was soft remembrance and sweet trust 475 

In one fond breast, ^ to which his own would melt, 
And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt. 

LIV. 

And he had learned to love, — I know n^why. 
For this in such as him seems strange of mood,— 
The helpless looks of blooming infancy, 480 

Even in its earhest nurture ; what subdued, 
To change like this, a mind so far imbued 
With scorn of man, it little boots to know ; 
But thus it was ; and though in solitude 
Small power the nipped affections have to grow, 485 

In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow. 

LV. 

And there was one soft breast, as hath been said. 
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties 
Than the church links withal ; and, though unwed, 
That love was pure, and, far above disguise, 490 

Had stood the test of mortal enmities 
Still undivided, and cemented more 
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes ; 
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore 
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour! 495 

I. 

The castled crag of Drachenfels ^ 
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, 

1 This refers to Byron's half-sister Augusta, to whom the lyric that fol- 
lows was written in May, 1816. 

2 " The castle of Drachenfels stands on the highest summit of the ' Seven 
Mountains,' over the Rhine banks. It is in ruins, and connected with some 
singular traditions. It is the first in view on the road from Bonn, but on the 



CANTO III. J CHILD E HAROLD. 59 

Whose breast of waters broadly swells 

Between the banks which bear the vine, 

And hills all rich with blossomed trees, 500 

And fields which promise corn and wine, 

And scattered cities crowming these, 

Whose far white walls along them shine. 

Have strewed a scene, which I should see 

With double joy wert thoit with me. 505 



And peasant girls, with deep-blue eyes, 

x^nd hands which offer early flowers. 

Walk smihng o'er this paradise ; 

Above, the frequent feudal towers 

Through green leaves lift their walls of gray; 510 

And many a rock which steeply lowers. 

And noble arch in proud decay. 

Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers ; 

But one thing want these banks of Rhine, — 

Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine! 515 



I send the lilies given to me ; 

Though long before thy hand they touch, 

I know that they must withered be, 

But yet reject them not as such ; 

For I have cherished them as dear, 520 

Because they yet may meet thine eye, 

And guide thy soul to mine even here. 

When thou behold'st them drooping nigh. 

And know'st them gathered by the Rhine, 

And offered from my heart to thine! 525 

opposite side of the river" (Byron). The word " Drachenfels " means 
" Dragon's Rock." 



6o LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 



The river nobly foams and flows, 

The charm of this enchanted ground, 

And all its thousand turns disclose 

Some fresher beauty varying round : 

The haughtiest breast its wish might bound 530 

Through life to dwell dehghted here ; 

Nor could on earth a spot be found 

To Nature and to me so dear, 

Could thy dear eyes in following mine 

Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine! 535 

LVI. 

By CoblenZji on a rise of gentle ground, 
There is a small and simple pyramid, 
Crowning the summit of the verdant mound ; 
Beneath its base are heroes' ashes hid, 

Our enemy's — but let not that forbid 540 

Honor to Marceau!^ o'er whose early tomb 
Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid, 
Lamenting and yet envying such a doom, 
FaUing for France, whose rights he battled to resume. 

LVII. 

Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, — 545 

His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes ; 
And fitly may the stranger lingering here 
Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose ; 

1 Coblenz, or Koblenz, at the confluence of the Moselle with the Rhine. 

2 Marceau, a general, killed in 1796, was buried at Coblenz in the same 
grave as that in which his colleague, General Hoche, was laid the following 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 6i 

For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, 
The few in number, who had not o'erstepped 550 

The charter to chastise which she bestows 
On such as wield her weapons ; he had kept 
The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept. 

LVIII. 

Here Ehrenbreitstein,i with her shattered wall 
Black with the miner's blast, upon her height 555 

Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball 
Rebounding idly on her strength did Hght : 
A tower of victory! from whence the flight 
Of baffled foes was watched along the plain : 
But Peace destroyed what War could never bhght, 560 
And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain — 
On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain. 

LIX. 

Adieu to thee, fair Rhine I'^ How long dehghted 
The stranger fain would linger on his way! 
Thine is a scene alike where souls united 565 

Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray ; 
And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey 
On self-condemning bosoms, it were here. 
Where Nature, nor too somber nor too gay, 
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, 570 

Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year. 

1 Ehrenbreitstein (the " Broad Stone of Honor ") is a fortified rock oppo- 
site Coblenz. 

2 Here is another transition in the poem. Byron bids adieu to the Rhine 
country and presently takes the reader to the Alps. The pupil is advised to 
trace the route of Harold's pilgrimage on a map. Byron gives us geography 
and history in poetry. 



62 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

LX. 

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu! 
There can be no farewell to scene like thine ; 
The mind is colored by thy every hue ; 
And if reluctantly the eyes resign 575 

Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine ! 
'Tis with the thankful heart of parting praise ; 
More mighty spots may rise, more glaring shine. 
But none unite in one attaching maze 
The brilHant, fair, and soft,— the glories of old days. 580 

LXI. 

The neghgently grand., the fruitful bloom 
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, 
The rolHng stream, the precipice's gloom, 
The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between. 
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been, 585 

In mockery of man's art ; and these withal 
A race of faces happy as the scene, 
Whose fertile bounties here extend to all. 
Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall. 

LXII. 

But these recede. Above me are the Alps,i 590 

The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls 

Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, 

And throned Eternity in icy halls 

Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls 

The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow! 595 

1 Byron spent four months in the Alp region of Switzerland, making his 
home at Coligny, near Geneva. Much of this canto was composed at a house 
called Campagna Diodati. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 63 

All that expands the spirit, yet appalls, 
Gather around these summits, as to show 
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. 

Lxni. 

But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, 
There is a spot should not be passed in vain, — 600 

Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man 
May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain. 
Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain ; 
Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host, 
A bony heap, through ages to remain, 605 

Themselves their monument ;— the Stygian coast 
Unsepulchered they roamed, and shrieked each wandering 
ghost.i 

LXIV. 

While Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies, 
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand ; 
They were true Glory's stainless victories, 610 

Won by the unambitious heart and hand 
Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band. 
All unbought champions in no princely cause 
Of vice-entailed Corruption ; they no land 
Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws 615 

Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause. 

1 In the battle of Morat, fought June 22, 1476, fifteen thousand men were 
slain, and their bones were " collected by the Swiss into an ossuary, which 
was destroyed in 1798." Byron, in a note, says of these bones: "A few 
still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages 
(all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less 
justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for 
knife handles, a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching 
of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to 
bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero, for which the 



64 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

LXV. 

By a lone wall a lonelier column rears 
A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days ; 
'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, 
And looks as with the wild-bewildered gaze 620 

Of one to stone converted by amaze, 
Yet still with consciousness ; and there it stands, 
Making a marvel that it not decays, 
When the coeval pride of human hands. 
Leveled Aventicum,i hath strewed her subject lands. 625 



LXVI. 

And there — oh! sweet and sacred be the name! — 
Julia— the daughter, the devoted — gave 
Her youth to Heaven ; her heart, beneath a claim 
Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. 
Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave 630 
The hfe she Hved in ; but the judge was just, 
And then she died on him she could not save. 
Their tomb was simple, and without a bust. 
And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.^ 

sole excuse is that, if I had not, the next passer-by might have perverted them 
to worse uses than the careful preservation which I intend for them." 

1 " Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where 
Avenches now stands " (Byron). 

2 " Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain en- 
deavor to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Csecina. 
Her epitaph was discovered many years ago. It is thus : ' Julia Alpinula : Hie 
jaceo. Infelicis patris infelix proles. Des Aventise Sacerdos. Exorare 
patris necem non potui : Male mori in fatis ille erat. Vixi annos XXIII.' I 
know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper 
interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish " 
(ByroxN). 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 65 

LXVII. 

But these are deeds which should not pass away, 635 

And names that must not wither, though the earth 
Forgets her empires with a just decay. 
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth ; 
The high, the mountain majesty of worth 
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, 640 

And from its immortality look forth 
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, 
Imperishably pure beyond all things below. 

LXVIII. 

Lake Leman wooes me with its crystal face. 
The mirror where the stars and mountains view 645 

The stillness of their aspect in each trace 
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue : 
There is too much of man here, to look through 
With a fit mind the might which I behold ; 
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew 650 

Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, 
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold. 

LXIX. 

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind : 
All are not fit with them to stir and toil. 
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind 655 

Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil 
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil 
Of our infection, till too late and long 
We may deplore and struggle with the coil, 
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 660 

Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong. 

5 



66 LORD BYRON. [cAxXto ill. 

LXX. 

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years 
In fatal penitence, and in the blight 
Of our own soul turn all our blood to tears. 
And color things to come with hues of Night ; 665 

The race of hfe becomes a hopeless flight 
To those that walk in darkness : on the sea 
The boldest steer but where their ports invite ; 
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity 
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be. 670 

LXXI. 

Is it not better, then, to be alone. 
And love Earth only for its earthly sake? 
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,^ 
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake. 

Which feeds it as a mother who doth make 675 

A fair but froward infant her own care, 
Kissing its cries away as these awake ; — 
Is it not better thus our lives to wear, 
Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear? 

LXXI I. 

I live not in myself, but I become 680 

Portion of that around me ; and to me 
High mountains are a feeling, bat the hum 
Of human cities torture.'-^ I can see 

1 " The color of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I 
have never seen equaled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean 
and Archipelago" (Byron). 

2 There is much here to suggest Wordsworth, as any student of Tintern 
Abbey and The Excursion will discern. W. J. Rolfe quotes approvingly 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 67 

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be 
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, 685 

Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, 
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain 
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. 

LXXIII. 

And thus I am absorbed, and this is hfe : 
I look upon the peopled desert past, 690 

As on a place of agony and strife, 
Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast. 
To act and suffer, but remount at last 
With a fresh pinion ; which I feel to spring. 
Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast 695 

Which it would cope with, on delighted wing. 
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cHng. 

LXXIV. 

And when, at length, the mind shall be all free 
From what it hates in this degraded form, 
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be 700 

Existent happier in the fly and worm, — 
When elements to elements conform. 
And dust is as it should be, shall I not 
Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm? 
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot? 705 

Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot? 

LXXV. 

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part 
Of me and of my soul, as I of them? 

from Dr. Darmesteter that in these lines we see " the deep abyss between 
Byron and Wordsworth : for him nature and man are enemies ; for Words- 
worth they are brethren." 



68 LORD BYRON. [canto iii. 

Is not the love of these deep in my heart 
With a pure passion; should I not contemn 710 

All objects, if compared with these, and stem 
A tide of suffering, rather than forego 
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm 
Of those whose eyes are only turned below, 714 

Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow? 

LXXVI. 

But this is not my theme ; and I return 
To that which is immediate, and require 
Those who find contemplation in the urn, 
To look on One,^ whose dust was once all fire, 
A native of the land where I respire 720 

The clear air for a while — a passing guest. 
Where he became a being, — whose desire 
Was to be glorious ; 'twas a foolish quest. 
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest. 

LXXVII. 

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, 725 

The apostle of affliction, he who threw 
Enchantment over passion, and from woe 
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew 
The breath which made him wretched ; yet he knew 
How to make madness beautiful, and cast 730 

O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue 
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed 
The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. 

LXXVIII. 

His love was passion's essence: — as a tree 

On fire by hghtning, with ethereal flame 735 

1 Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom commentators have compared with Byron. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 69 

Kindled he was, and blasted ; for to be 
Thus, and enamored, were in him the same. 
But his was not the love of Kving dame. 
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams. 
But of ideal beauty, which became 740 

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems 
Along his burning page, distempered though it seems. 

LXXIX. 

This breathed itself to life in Juhe,^ this 
Invested her with all that's wild and sweet ; 
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss 745 

Which every morn his fevered lip would greet, 
From hers, who but with friendship his would meet ; 
But to that gentle touch through brain and breast 
Flashed the thrilled spirit's love-devouring heat ; 
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blessed 750 

Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possessed. 

LXXX. 

His life was one long war with self-sought foes. 
Or friends by him self-banished ; for his mind 
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary,^ and chose, 
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind, 755 

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. 
But he was frenzied, — wherefore, who may know, 
Since cause might be which skill could never find? 
But he was frenzied by disease or woe, 
To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show. 760 

1 The Comtesse d'Houdetot, whom Rousseau loved. 

2 Carlyle relates that to a visitor Rousseau said " with flaming eyes " : "I 
know why you come here. You come to see what a poor life I lead, how 
little is in my poor pot that is boiling there." 



70 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 



LXXXI. 

For then he was inspired, and from him came, 
As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore. 
Those oracles which set the world in flame, 
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more : 
Did he not this for France ^ which lay before 765 

Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years, 
Broken and trembhng to the yoke she bore, 
Till by the voice of him and his compeers 
Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o'ergrown fears? 

LXXXII. 

They made themselves a fearful monument! 770 

The wreck of old opinions — things which grew, 
Breathed from the birth of time : the veil they rent, 
And what behind it lay, all earth shall view. 
But good with ill they also overthrew^ 

Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild 775 

Upon the same foundation, and renew 
Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled, 
As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed. 

LXXXIII. 

But this will not endure, nor be endured! 

Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt. 780 

They might have used it better, but, allured 

By their new vigor, sternly have they dealt 

On one another ; pity ceased to melt 

With her once natural charities. But they, 

1 " No writer of the eighteenth century was so influential in bringing 
about the French Revolution as Rousseau " (Tozer). 



CANTO iii.J CHILDE HAROLD. 71 

Who in oppression's darkness caved had dwelt, 785 

They were not eagles, nourished with the day ; 
What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey ? 1 



LXXXIV. 

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? 
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear 
That which disfigures it ; and they who war 
With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear 
Silence, but not submission : in his lair 
Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour 
Which shall atone for years; none need despair: 
It came, it cometh, and will come, — the power 795 

To punish or forgive— in 07ie we shall be slower. 



790 



LXXXV. 

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, 
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing 
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 800 

This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 2 
To waft me from distraction ; once I loved 
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring 
Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved. 
That I with stern dehghts should e'er have been so moved. 805 

1 Teachers might add interest to the study of this passage in the poem by 
commenting on Byron's opinion of the French Revolution and by presenting 
other views from different authors. 

2 Byron and Shelley sailed round and across Lake Geneva in a small boat 
in the last days of June, 1816. This excursion furnished Byron material for 
the charming stanzas that follow. Rolfe remarks that these stanzas " have 
a harmony and a sweetness that is like Shelley." Professor Keene notes that 
" in this lovely passage the charms of the calm are enhanced as a skillful 
preparation for what is coming." 



72 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 



LXXXVI. 

It is the hush of night, and all between 
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, 
Mellowed and minghng, yet distinctly seen, 
Save darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear 
Precipitously steep; and drawing near, 8io 

There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, 
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood '} on the ear 
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, 
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more ; 

LXXXVII. 

He is an evening reveler, who makes 815 

His life an infancy, and sings his fill ; 
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes 
Starts into voice a moment, then is still. 
There seems a floating whisper on the hill, 
But that is fancy, for the starhght dews 820 

All silently their tears of love instill. 
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse 
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues. 

Lxxxvni. 

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! 

If in your bright leaves we would read the fate 825 

Of men and empires, — 'tis to be forgiven 

That, in our aspirations to be great. 

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, 

And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are 

1 " Notice the beautiful pause after the seventh syllable, which is frequent 
in this part of ihe poem, as in lines 792, 802, 829, 849, 863 " (Tozer). 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 73 

A beauty and a mystery, and create 830 

In us such love and reverence from afar, 
That fortune, fame, power, hfe, have named themselves a star. 

LXXXIX. 

All heaven and earth are still — though not in sleep. 
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most ; 
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep : — 835 

All heaven and earth are still : From the high host 
Of stars to the lulled lake and mountain coast, 
All is concentered in a life intense, 
-Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost. 
But hath a part of being, and a sense 840 

Of that which is of all Creator and defense. 

XC. 

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt 
In solitude, where we are least alone ; 
A truth, which through our being then doth melt, 
And purifies from self : it is a tone, 845 

The soul and source of music, which makes known 
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm 
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,^ 
Binding all things with beauty ;— 'twould disarm 
The specter Death, had he substantial power to harm. 850 

XCI. 

Not vainly did the early Persian make 
His altar the high places, and the peak 
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take 
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 

1 The zone or girdle of Venus, " which had the power of inspiring love for 
the wearer." 



74 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak, 855 

Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare 
Columns and idol dwellings, Goth or Greek, 
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air, 
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray'r!^ 

XCII. 

The sky is changed! — and such a change! O night, 860 
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong. 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the hght 
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among 
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, 865 
But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud. 
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! 2 

XCIII. 

And this is in the night: — Most glorious night! 

Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be 870 

A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, — 

A portion of the tempest and of thee! 

How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 

And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! 

1 " The groves were God's first temples " (Bryant). 

" Go thou and seek the house of prayer ; 
I to the woodlands will repair 
And seek the God of nature there." 

SOUTHEY. 

2 " The thunderstorm to which these lines refer occurred on the 13th of 
June, 18 1 6, at midnight. I have seen among the mountains several more 
terrible, but none more beautiful" (Byron). 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 75 

And now again 'tis black, — and now the glee 875 

Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, 
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. 

XCIV. 

Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between 
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted 
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, 880 

That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted ; 
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, 
Love was the very root of the fond rage 
Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed : 
Itself expired, but leaving them an age 885 

Of years all winters, — war within themselves to wage. 

xcv. 

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way. 
The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand : 
For here, not one, but many, make their play. 
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand, 890 

Flashing and cast around ; of all the band, 
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked 
His lightnings, — as if he did understand 
That in such gaps as desolation worked, 
There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked. 895 

XCVI. 

Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, hghtnings! ye! 
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul 
To make these felt and feehng, well may be 
. Things that have made me watchful ; the far roll 

Of your departing voices is the knoll 900 

Of what in me is sleepless,— if I rest. 



76 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? 
Are ye hke those within the human breast? 
Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest? 

XCVII. 

Could I embody and unbosom now 905 

That which is most within me,— could I wreak 
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw 
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak. 
All that I would have sought, and all I seek, 
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe— into one word, 910 

And that one word were Lightning, I would speak ; 
But as it is, I live and die unheard, 
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. 

XCVIII. 

The morn is up again, the dewy mom, 
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, 915 

Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn. 
And living as if earth contained no tomb, — 
And glowing into day : we may resume 
The march of our existence : and thus I, 
Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room 920 

And food for meditation, nor pass by 
Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly. 

XCIX. 

Clarens!! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love! 
Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought ; 

1 A village near Vevay, on Lake Geneva. Rousseau has described it in 
his writings. In a long note Byron says: "It would be difficult to see 
Clarens (with the scenes around it,— Vevay, Chillon, Boveret, Saint-Gingo, 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. TJ 

Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above 925 

The very Glaciers have his colors caught, 
And sunset into rose hues sees them wrought 
By rays which sleep there lovingly : the rocks, 
The permanent crags, tell here of Love, wh^sought 
In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, 930 

Which stir and sting the soul with hope that wooes, then mocks. 



C. 

Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod, — 
Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne 
To which the steps are mountains ; where the god 
Is a pervading life and light, — so shown 935 

Not on those summits solely, nor alone 
In the still cave and forest ; o'er the flower 
His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown. 
His soft and summer breath, whose tender power 
Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour. 940 



CI. 

All things are here of /iimy from the black pines, 
Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar 
Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines 
Which slope his green path downward to the shore, 
Where the bowed waters meet him, and adore, 945 

Kissing his feet with murmurs ; and the wood, 
The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, 
But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, 
Offering to him, and his, a populous sohtude. 

Meillerie, Eivan, and the entrances of the Rhone) without being forcibly 
struck with its peculiar adaptation to the persons and events with which it 
has been peopled." 



78 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

CII. 

A populous solitude of bees and birds, 950 

And fairy-formed and many-colored things, 
Who woi^iip him with notes more sweet than words, 
And innocently open their glad wings. 
Fearless and full of life : the gush of springs, 
And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend 955 

Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings 
The swiftest thought of beauty, here extend. 
Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end. 

cm. 

He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore. 
And make his heart a spirit ; he who knows 960 

That tender mystery, will love the more ; 
For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes. 
And the world's waste, have driven him far from those, 
For 'tis his nature to advance or die ; 

He stands not still, but or decays, or grows 965 

Into a boundless blessing, which may vie 
With the immortal lights, in its eternity! 

CIV. 

'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, 
Peopling it with affections ; but he found 
It was the scene which Passion must allot 970 

To the mind's purified beings ; 'twas the ground 
Where early Love his Psyche's^ zone unbound, 
And hallowed it with loveliness: 'tis lone. 
And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound. 
And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone 975 
Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne. 

1 Read the myth of Cupid and Psyche. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 79 

cv. 

Lausanne !i and Ferney!^ ye have been the abodes 
Of names which unto you bequeathed a name ; 
Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads, 
A path to perpetuity of fame : 980 

They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim 
Was, Titan-hke, on daring doubts to pile 
Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame 
Of Heaven, again assailed, if Heaven the while 984 

On man and man's research could deign do more than smile. 

CVI. 

The one ^ was fire and fickleness, a child 
Most mutable in wishes, but in mind 
A wit as various,— gay, grave, sage, or wild,— 
Historian, bard, philosopher, combined ; 
He multiplied himself among mankind, 990 

The Proteus of their talents : But his own 
Breathed most in ridicule,— which, as the wind. 
Blew where it listed, laying all things prone, — 
Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne. 

CVII. 

The other,* deep and slow, exhausting thought, 995 

And hiving wisdom with each studious year. 

In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought. 

And shaped his weapon with an edge severe. 

Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer ; * 

The lord of irony,— that master spell, 1000 

1 Lausanne is on the north side of Lake Geneva. In a letter to Thomas 
Moore, Shelley wrote: "We visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. 
We were shown the decayed summerhouse where he finished his history." 

2 Ferney, near Geneva, was the home of Voltaire. 3 Voltaire. 
4 Gibbon attacked Christianity in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 



8o LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, 
And doomed him to the zealot's ready Hell, 
Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. 

CVIII. 

Yet, peace be with their ashes,— for by them, 
If merited, the penalty is paid ; 1005 

It is not ours to judge, far less condemn ; 
The hour must come when such things shall be made 
Known unto all, — or hope and dread allayed 
By slumber, on one pillow, in the dust, 
Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decayed; loio 

And when it shall revive, as is our trust, 
'Twill be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just. 

CIX. 

But let me quit man's works, again to read 
His Maker's, spread around me, and suspend 
This page, which from my reveries I feed, 1015 

Until it seems prolonging without end. 
The clouds above me to the white Alps tend. 
And I must pierce them, and survey whate'er 
May be permitted, as my steps I bend 
To their most great and growing region, where 1020 

The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air. 

ex. 

Italia! too, Italia! looking on thee. 

Full flashes on the soul the hght of ages. 

Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee. 

To the last halo of the chiefs and sages 1025 

Who glorify thy consecrated pages ; 

Thou wert the throne and grave of empires ; still, 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 8i 

The fount at which the panting mind assuages 
Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill, 
Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill.i 1030 

CXI. 

Thus far have I proceeded in a theme 
Renewed with no kind auspices:— to feel 
We are not what we have been, and to deem 
We are not what we should be, and to steel 
The heart against itself; and to conceal, 1035 

With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught, — 
Passion or feehng, purpose, grief, or zeal, — 
Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought, 
Is a stern task of soul: — No matter, — it is taught. 

CXII. 

And for these words, thus woven into song, 1040 

It may be that they are a harmless wile, — 
The coloring of the scenes which fleet along, 
Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile 
My breast, or that of others, for a while. 
Fame is the thirst of youth, but I am not 1045 

So young as to regard men's frown or smile. 
As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot ; 
I stood and stand alone, — remembered or forgot. 

CXIII. 

I have not loved the world, nor the world me ; 

I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed 1050 

To its idolatries a patient knee, 

Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud 

1 Byron resumes the subject of Italy in the fourth canto. 
6 



82 LORD BYRON. [canto hi. 

In worship of an echo ; in the crowd 
They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud 1055 

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 
Had I not filed my mind,i which thus itself subdued. 



CXIV. 

I have not loved the world, nor the world me, — 
But let us part fair foes ; I do believe. 

Though I have found them not, that there may be 1060 
Words which are things,'-^ hopes which will not deceive. 
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave 
Snares for the failing ; I would also deem 
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; 
That two, or one, are almost what they seem, — 1065 

That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. 



cxv. 

My daughter! with thy name this song begun ; 
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end ; 
I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none 
Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend 1070 

To whom the shadows of far years extend : 
Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold. 
My voice shall with thy future visions blend, 
And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, 
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mold. 1075 

1 Defiled. " For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind " (Macbeth, iii. i. ). 

2 " But words are things, and a small drop of ink 
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces 
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 

Byron's Don Juau. 



CANTO III.] CHILDE HAROLD. 83 

CXVI. 

To aid thy mind's development, to watch 
Thy dawn of little joys, to sit and see 
Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch 
Knowledge of objects, — wonders yet to thee! 
To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, 1080 

And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,— 
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me ; 
Yet this was in my nature : as it is, 
I know not what is there, yet something like to this. 

CXVII. 

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, 1085 

I know that thou wilt love me ; though my name 
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught 
With desolation, and a broken claim : 
Though the grave closed between us,— 'twere the same, 
I know that thou wilt love me ; though to drain logo 

My blood from out. thy being were an aim. 
And an attainment, — all would be in vain, — 
Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain. 

CXVIII. 

The child of love, though born in bitterness, 
And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire 1095 

These were the elements, and thine no less. 
As yet such are around thee, but thy fire 
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher. 
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea 
And from the mountains where I now respire, 11 00 

Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, 
As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me. 



CANTO THE FOURTH.i 

" Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna, 
Quel Monte che divide, e quel che serra 
Italia, e un mare e 1' altro, che la bagna." 2 
Ariosto, Satira Hi. 



I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs j^ 
A palace and a prison on each hand : 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 5 

Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, 
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles ! 

IL 

She looks a sea Cybele,* fresh from ocean, 10 

Rising with her tiara of proud towers 

1 This canto was begun at Venice in June, 181 7, and was published early 
in 1 8 18, with an introductory letter to the poet's friend and traveling com- 
panion, Hobhouse, who furnished ample historical notes for it. 

2 " I have seen Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Romagna, the mountain 
ranges which divide and those which border Italy, and the one sea and the 
other which bathe her." 

3 Across which prisoners were conducted from the palace to the prison. 

4 The goddess of the earth. 

84 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 85 

At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the waters and their powers : 
And such she was ; — her daughters had their dowers 
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 1 5 

Poured in her lap all gems in sparkHng showers. 
In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 



III. 

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. 
And silent rows the songless gondolier ; 20 

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore. 
And music meets not always now the ear : 
Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
States fall, arts fade— but Nature doth not die, 
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 25 

The pleasant place of all festivity. 
The revel of the earth, the mask of Italy! 



IV. 

But unto us she hath a spell beyond 
Her name in story, and her long array 
• Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond 30 

Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; 
Ours is a trophy which will not decay 
With the Rialto '} Shylock and the Moor, 
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away 2 — 
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, 35 

For us repeopled were the solitary shore. 

1 A bridge spanning the Grand Canal, Venice. 

2 See Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Othello the Moor of Venice ; 
also Otway's Venice Preserved. 



86 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

V. 

The beings of the mmd are not of clay; 
Essentially immortal, they create 
And multiply in us a brighter ray 

And more beloved existence : that which Fate 40 

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state 
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits suppUed, 
First exiles, then replaces what we hate ; 
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died. 
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. 45 

VI. 

Such is the refuge of our youth and age, 
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy ; 
And this worn feeling peoples many a page, 
. And, maybe, that which grows beneath mine eye : 
Yet there are things whose strong reality 50 

Outshines our fairyland ; in shape and hues 
More beautiful than our fantastic sky, 
And the strange constellations which the Muse 
O'er her wild universe is skillful to diffuse : 

VII. 

I saw or dreamed of such,— but let them go, — 55 

They came like truth, and disappeared hke dreams ; j j 

And whatsoe'er they were — are now but so: 
I could replace them if I would ; still teems 
My mind with many a form which aptly seems 
Such as I sought for, and at moments found ; 60 

Let these too go — for waking Reason deems 
Such overweening fantasies unsound. 
And other voices speak, and other sights surround. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 87 

VIII. 

I've taught me other tongues, 1 and in strange eyes 
Have made me not a stranger ; to the mind 65 

Which is itself, no changes bring surprise ; 
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find 
A country with — aye, or without mankind ; 
Yet was I born where men are proud to be, — 
Not without cause ; and should I leave behind 70 

The inviolate island of the sage and free,^ 
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, 

IX. 

Perhaps I loved it well : and should I lay 
My ashes in a soil which is not mine, 

My spirit shall resume it— if v/e may 75 

Unbodied choose a sanctuary, I twine 
My hopes of being remembered in my line 
With my land's language : if too fond and far 
These aspirations in their scope incline, — 
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, 80 

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar 



My name from out the temple where the dead 

Are honored by the nations — let it be — 

And light the laurels on a loftier head! 

And be the Spartan's epitaph on me — 85 

" Sparta hath many a worthier son than he." 

Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need ; 

1 Byron was familiar with the Italian language, 

2 What island is meant? 



88 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
I planted : they have torn me, and I bleed : 89 

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. 



XL 

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;i 
And, annual marriage now no more renewed, 
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, 
Neglected garment of her widowhood! 
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood 2 95 

Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, 
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued. 
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour 
When Venice was a queen with an unequaled dower. 



XII. 

The Suabian^ sued, and now the Austrian reigns — 100 
An Emperor * tramples where an Emperor knelt ; 
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains 
Clank over sceptered cities ; nations melt 
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
The sunshine for a while, and downward go 105 

Like lauwine ^ loosened from the mountain's belt ; 
Oh for one hour of Wind old IJandolo ! ^ 
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. 

1 The doge of Venice used to " wed the Adriatic" by dropping a ring 
into the sea annually, on Ascension Day, to indicate that he was lord of the 
waters. 

2 The patron saint of Venice. The winged lion of St. Mark is on a col- 
umn at the entrance of the Piazzetta, the " proud Place" where Barbarossa 
the emperor bowed to the pope in 1177. 

3 Barbarossa. 4 Napoleon. 5 Avalanche. 
* The doge who, in 1204, led the assault on Constantinople. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 89 

XIII. 

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, 
Their gilded collars ghttering in the sun;i no 

But is not Doria's ^ menace come to pass? 
Are they not bridled? — Venice, lost and won, 
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, 
Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose! 
Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, 115 

Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes. 
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. 

XIV. 

In youth she was all glory,— a new Tyre ; 
Her very byword sprung from victory, 
The " Planter of the Lion,"^ which through fire 120 

And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea ; 
Though making many slaves, herself still free, 
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite ; 
Witness Troy's rival, Candia!'^ Vouch it, ye 
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight I^ 125 

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. 

• XV. . 

Statues of glass — all shivered— the long file 
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust ; 

1 "The famous bronze horses above the portal of St. Mark's Church. 
Constantine carried them from Rome to Constantinople, whence Dandolo 
brought them to Venice. In 1797 Napoleon took them to Paris, but in 181 5 
they were restored to their former position in Venice " (Rolfe). 

2 A Genoese commander who threatened to bridle the horses. 

3 " The lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic " (Byron). 

4 Candia, the capital of Crete, held out against a siege of twenty-four 
years, while Troy was taken in ten years. 

5 The Turks were defeated near the entrance of the Strait of Lepanto. 



90 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile 
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; 130 

Their scepter broken, and their sword in rust, 
Have yielded to the stranger : empty halls. 
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must 
Too oft remind her who and what inthralls. 
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. 135 



XVI. 

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, 
And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, 
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, 
Her voice their only ransom from afari^ 
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car 140 

Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins 
Fall from h^s hands, his idle scimiter 
Starts from its belt — he rends his captive's chains, 
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. 



XVII. 

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, 145 

Were all thy proud historic deed's forgot. 
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine. 
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot 
Which ties thee to thy tyrants ; and thy lot 
Is shameful to the nations, — most of all, 150 

Albion! 2 to thee: the Ocean queen should not 
Abandon Ocean's children ; in the fall 
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. 

1 Read, in Plutarch's Life of Nicias, how certain Greek captives ransomed 
themselves by reciting Attic poetry. (See Browning's Balaustion's Adventure. ) 

2 England; 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 91 

XVIII. 

I loved her from my boyhood ; she to me 
Was as a fairy city of the heart, 155 

Rising hke water columns from the sea, 
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart ; 
And Otway, Radcliffe,i Schiller,^ Shakespeare's art, 
Had stamped her image in me, and even so, 
Although I found her thus, we did not part ; 160 

Perchance even dearer in her day of woe. 
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. 

XIX. 

I can repeople with the past— and of 
The present there is still for eye and thought, 
And meditation chastened down, enough; 165 

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought ; 
And of the happiest moments which were wrought 
Within the web of my existence, some 
From thee, fair Venice ! have their colors caught : 
There are some feelings Time cannot benumb, 170 

Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb. 

XX. 

But from their nature will the tannen 2 grow 

Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks, 

Rooted in barrenness, where naught below 

Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks 175 

Of eddying storms ; yet springs the trunk, and mocks 

The howling tempest, till its height and frame 

1 Ann Radcliffe wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho. J. C. F. Schiller wrote 
The Ghost Seer. These books relate to Italy. 

2 The plural of the German Tanne, a fir tree. 



92 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks 
Of bleak, gray granite into life it came, 
And grew a giant tree ;— the mind may grow the same. i8o 

XXI. 

Existence may be borne, and the deep root 
Of Hfe and sufferance make its firm abode 
The bare and desolated bosoms : mute 
The camel labors with the heaviest load, 
And the wolf dies in silence,— not bestowed 185 

In vain should such example be ; if they. 
Things of ignoble or of savage mood. 
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
May temper it to bear,— it is but for a day. 

XXII. 

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, 190 

Even by the sufferer ; and, in each event. 
Ends : Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, 
Return to whence they came — with like intent. 
And weave their web again ; some, bowed and bent. 
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time, 195 

And perish with the reed on which they leant ; 
Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime, 
According as their souls were formed to sink or cHmb. 

XXIII. 

But ever and anon of griefs subdued 

There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, 200 

Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued ; 

And slight withal may be the things which bring 

Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 

Aside forever : it may be a sound — 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 93 

A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring — 205 

A flower— the wind— the ocean— which shall wound, 
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound ; 

XXIV. 

And how and why we know not, nor can trace 
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, 
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface 210 

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, 
Which out of things familiar, undesigned, 
When least we deem of such, calls up to view 
The specters whom no exorcism can bind,— 
The cold, the changed, perchance the dead— anew, 215 
The mourned, the loved, the lost— too many! yet how few! 

XXV.i 

But my soul wanders ; I demand it back 
To meditate amongst decay, and stand 
A ruin amidst ruins ; there to track 

Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land 220 

Which was the mightiest in its old command. 
And is the loveliest, and must ever be 
The master mold of Nature's heavenly hand ; 
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free. 
The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea, 225 

XXVI.2 

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! 
And even since, and now, fair Italy! 

1 Byron here begins the poetical record of a six weeks' tour through 
northern Italy. He left Venice in April, 18 1 7, and returned late in May. 

2 Professor Keene singles out this stanza as " a passage of high feeling 
couched in faultless language." 



94 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Thou art the garden of the world, the home 
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ; 
Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? 230 

Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
More rich than other climes' fertility ; 
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. 



XXVII.i 

The moon is up, and yet it is not night ; 235 

Sunset divides the sky with her ; a sea 
Of glory streams along the Alpine height 
Of blue Friuli's^ mountains. Heaven is free 
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be,— 
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,— 240 

Where the Day joins the past Eternity, 
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest ^ 
Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest! 



XXVIII. 

A single star is at her side,^ and reigns 

With her o'er half the lovely heaven ; but still 245 

Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains 

Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill, 

As Day and Night contending were, until 

Nature reclaimed her order: — gently flows 

1 Professor Tozer says: "This description of sunset is the nearest ap- 
proach to word painting that can be found in the poem." 

2 The Julian Alps. 3 The crescent moon. 

4 " The horned moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip." 

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



CANTO IV. J CHILDE HAROLD. 95 

The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instill 250 

The odorous purple of a new-born rose, 
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows, 

XXIX. 

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, 
Comes down upon the waters ; all its hues. 
From the rich sunset to the rising star, 255 

Their magical variety diffuse : 
And now they change ; a paler shadow strews 
Its mantle o'er the mountains ; parting day 
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 
With a new color as it gasps away, 260 

The last still loveliest,— till— 'tis gone— and all is gray. 

XXX. 

There is a tomb 'in Arqua ;i— reared in air. 
Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose 
The bones of Laura's ^ lover : here repair 
Many familiar with his well-sung woes, 265 

The pilgrims of his genius. He arose 
To raise a language, and his land reclaim 
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes : 
Watering the tree which bears his lady's name 
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. 270 

XXXI. 

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died ; 
The mountain village where his latter days 

1 A village in which the Italian poet Petrarch died, July 18, 1374. His 
house still stands, and his tomb, a sarcophagus resting on pillars of red mar- 
ble, is visited by many tourists. 

2 Laura, a lady of Avignon, whom Petrarch loved and to whom he 
addressed many of his sonnets. 



96 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Went down the vale of years ; and 'tis their pride— 
An honest pride— and let it be their praise, 
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze 275 

His mansion and his sepulcher ; both plain 
And venerably simple, such as raise 
A feeling more accordant with his strain 
Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane. 

XXXII. 

And the soft, quiet hamlet where he dwelt 280 

Is one of that complexion ^ which seems made 
For those who their mortality have felt, 
And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed 
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade. 
Which shows a distant prospect far away 285 

Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,- 
For they can lure no further ; and the ray 
Of a bright sun can make sufficient hohday, 

XXXIII. 

Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers, 
And shining in the brawling brook, whereby, 290 

Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours 
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye 
Idlesse - it seem, hath its morality. 
If from society we learn to live, 

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die \^ 295 

It hath no flatterers ; vanity can give 
No hollow aid ; alone— man with his God must strive : 

1 Study the meanings of the word " complexion." 

2 Archaic form for " idleness." 

3 " How blest the Solitary's lot" (Robert Burns). 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 97 

XXXIV. 

Or, it may be, with demons,^ who impair 
The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey- 
In melancholy bosoms, such as were 300 
Of moody texture from their earhest day. 
And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, 
Deeming themselves predestined to a doom 
Which is not of the pangs that pass away ; 
Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, 305 
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. 

XXXV. 

Ferrara!^ in thy wide and grass-grown streets, 
Whose symmetry was not for solitude. 
There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats 
Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood 310 

Of Este,3 which for many an age made good 
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore 
Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood 
Of petty power impelled, of those who wore 
The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. 315 

XXXVI. 

And Tasso ^ is their glory and their shame. 
Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! 

1 ' ' The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better 
thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Savior ; and 
our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete soli- 
tude " (Byron). ^ Once an important town. 

3 A noble Italian family. (See Browning's Sordello.) 

4 Tasso's great poem is called Jerusalem Delivered. (See Byron's La- 
ment of Tasso.) 

7 



98 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame, 
And where Alfonso ^ bade his poet dwell : 
The miserable despot could not quell 320 

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend 
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell 
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end 
Scattered the clouds away ; and on that name attend 

XXXVII. 

The tears and praises of all time ; while thine 325 

Would rot in its obHvion — in the sink 
Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line 
Is shaken into nothing— but the link 
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think 
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn : 330 

Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink 
From thee! if in another station born. 
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou madest to mourn : 

XXXVIII. 

Thou ! formed to eat, and be despised, and die, 
Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou 335 

Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty : 
He ! with a glory round his furrowed brow. 
Which emanated then, and dazzles now. 
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,^ 
And Boileau,^ whose rash envy could allow 340 

No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, 
• That whetstone of the teeth— monotony in wire! 

1 Duke of Ferrara, who imprisoned Tasso as being a madman, because 
the poet dared to love the duke's sister. 

2 A Florentine literary society, Delia Crusca, or " Academy of Chaff." 

3 A French critic who underrated Tasso's poetry. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 99 

XXXIX. 

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his 
In hfe and death to be the mark where ^^>ong 
xA.imed with her poisoned arrows, — but to miss. 345 

Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song! 
Each year brings forth its milhons ; but how long 
The tide of generations shall roll on. 
And not the whole combined and countless throng 
Compose a mind like thine? though all in one 350 

Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a Gun. 

XL. 

Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, 
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine. 
The Bards of Hell and Chivalry ;! first rose 
The Tuscan father's comedy divine; 355 

Then, not unequal to the Florentine, 
The southern Scott, the minstrel w^ho called forth 
A new creation with his magic line, 
And, like the Ariosto of the North, 
Sang ladye love and war, romance and knightly worth. 360 

XLI. 

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust 

The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves ; 

Nor was the ominous element unjust, 

For the true laurel wTeath which Glory weaves 

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, 365 

And the false semblance but disgraced his brow ; 

1 Dante and Ariosto. The first part of Dante's greatest poem is called 
Inferno. Ariosto's Orlando Furioso is largely a poem of chivalry. 



100 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Yet" still, if fondly Superstition grieves, 
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 
Whate'er it sti^ikes ; — yon head is doubly sacred now.^ 

XLII.2 

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast 370 

The fatal gift of beauty, which became 
A funeral dower of present woes and past, 
On thy sweet brow is sorrow plowed by shame. 
And annals graved in characters of flame. 
O God! that thou wert in thy nakedness 375 

Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim 
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press 
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress ; 

XLIII. 

Then mightst thou more appall ; or, less desired. 
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored 380 

For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, 
Would not be seen the armed torrents poured 
Down the deep Alps ; nor would the hostile horde 
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po 
Quaff blood and water ; nor the stranger's sword 385 

Be thy sad weapon of defense, and so, 
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe. 

XLIV. 

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,^ 
The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind, 

1 " Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine 
church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was 
struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away " (Byron). 

2 This stanza and the next, as Byron tells us in a note, are mainly a trans- 
lation of a famous sonnet on Italy, by Filicaja, who died in 1707. 

3 Servius Sulpicius. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 1 01 

The friend of Tully :i as my bark did skim 390 

The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, 
Came Megara before me, and behind 
^gina lay, Piraeus on the right. 
And Corinth on the left ; I lay reclined 
Along the prow, and saw all these unite 395 

In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight ; 

XLV. 

For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared 
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site. 
Which only make more mourned and more endeared 
The few last rays of their far-scattered light, 400 

And the crushed rehcs of their vanished might. 
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, 
These sepulchers of cities, which excite 
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page 
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. 405 

XLVI. 

That page is now before me, and on mine 
His country's ruin added to the mass 
Of perished states he mourned in their decline, 
And I in desolation : all that was 

Of then destruction is; and now, alas! 410 

Rome — Rome imperial, bows her to the storm. 
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass 
The skeleton of her Titanic form. 
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. 

XLVII. 

Yet, Italy! through every other land 415 

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side ; 
1 Cicero. 



102 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Mother of Arts! as once of Arms ; thy hand 
Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ; 
Parent of our Rehgionl^ whom the wide 
Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! 420 

Europe, repentant of her parricide. 
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven. 
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. - 

XLVIII. 

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps 425 

A softer feeling for her fairy halls. ^ 
Girt by her theater of hills, she reaps 
Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps 
To laughing life, with her redundant horn. 
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps 430 

Was modern Luxury of Commerce born. 
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. 

XLIX. 

There, too, the goddess * loves in stone, and fills 
The air around with beauty ; we inhale 
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instills 435 

Part of its immortality ; the veil 
Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale 
We stand, and in that form and face behold 
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail ; 
And to the fond idolaters of old 440 

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mold : 

1 The original Christian church was fostered by Rome. 

2 What has been the progress of Italy since Byron lamented her decay? 

3 Florence is on the Arno. 

4 The Venus de Medici. Keene says: " It is now considered an unin- 
spired copy by some trade artist living at Rome about the time of Augustus." 
Byron's taste was not always equal to his enthusiasm. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 103 



We gaze and turn away, and know not Wiiere, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fullness; there — forever there — 
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, • 445 

We stand as captives, and would not depart. 
Away! — there need no words nor terms precise, 
The paltry jargon of the marble mart, 

Where Pedantry gulls Folly— we have eyes:i 449 

Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.'-^ 

LI. 

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? 
Or to more deeply blest Anchises?^ or, 
In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies 
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War ? * 
And gazing in thy face as toward a star, 455 

Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, 
Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are 
With lava kisses melting while they burn, 
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn? 



LIL 

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, 460 

Their full divinity inadequate 

That feeling to express, or to improve. 

The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 

1 Does not even genius require education in order to judge correctly of 

the fine arts, painting, sculpture, poetry? Byron remained in Florence only 

a single day. 2 Paris of Troy awarded the prize for beauty to Venus. 

3 Anchises, the father of ^neas, was beloved by Venus. * Mars. 



I04 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Has moments like their brightest ; but the weight 
Of earth recoils upon us;— let it go! 465 

We can recall such visions, and create, 
From what has been, or might be, things which grow 
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. 

' ft 

LIII. 

I leave to learned fingers and wise hands, 
The artist and his ape,i to teach and tell 470 

How well his connoisseurship understands 
The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell : 
Let these describe the undescribable : 
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 
Wherein that image shall forever dwell; 475 

The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream 
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 



LIV. 

In Santa Croce's ^ holy precincts lie 
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 
Even in itself an immortahty, 480 

Though there were nothing save the past, and this, 
The particle of those sublimities 
Which have relapsed to chaos : here repose 
Angelo's,^ Alfieri's * bones, and his. 

The starry Galileo,^ with his woes; 485 

Here Machiavelli's ^ earth returned to whence it rose. 

1 Imitator. 2 Holy Cross, a famous cathedral in Florence. 

3 Michael Angelo Buonarroti, the master painter, sculptor, and architect 
(born 1475, died 1564). 4 Italian poet (born 1749, died 1803). 

6 Italian astronomer (born 1564, died 1642). 

6 Famous Italian political writer, author of The Prince (born 1469, died 
1527). 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 105 

LV. 

These are four minds, which, h'ke the elements,^ 
Might furnish forth creation: — Italy! 
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents 
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, 490 

And hath denied, to every other sky, 
Spirits which soar from ruin : thy decay 
Is still impregnate with divinity. 
Which gilds it with revivifying ray; 
Such as the great of yore, Canova^ is to-day. 495 



LVI. 

But where repose the all Etruscan three — 
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they. 
The Bard of Prose,^ creative spirit! he 
Of the Hundred Tales of love — where did they lay 
Their bones, distinguished from our common clay 500 

In death as life? Are they resolved to dust. 
And have their country's marbles naught to say? 
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? 
Did they not to her breast their filial earth intrust? 

LVII. 

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,* . 505 

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore : 
Thy factions,^ in their worse than civil war. 
Proscribed the bard whose name forevermore 

1 Earth, air, water, fire, or hot, cold, moist, dry. 

2 An Italian sculptor of Byron's day (born 1757, died 1822). 

3 Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, etc. He was buried near Florence. 
* In Ravenna. 5 Guelphs and Ghibellines, 



lo6 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Their children's children would in vain adore 
With the remorse of ages; and the crown 510 

Which Petrarch's laureate ^ brow supremely wore, 
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, 
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled— not thine own. 

LVIII. 

Boccaccio ^ to his parent earth bequeathed 
His dust,— and lies it not her great among, 515 

With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed 
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? ^ 
That music in itself, whose sounds are song, 
The poetry of speech ? No ; — even his tomb 
Uptorn, must bear the hyena bigot's wrong,* 520 

No more amidst the meaner dead find room, 
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for who77i I^ 

LIX. 

And Santa Croce ^ wants their mighty dust ; 

Yet for this want more noted, as of yore 

The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, 525 

Did but of Rome's best son remind her more:'^ 

Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore. 

Fortress of falling empire! honored sleeps 

1 Petrarch was crowned poet laureate at Rome in 1 341. 

2 Boccaccio was buried near the place of his birth, Cetaldo. 

3 Boccaccio did for Italian prose what Wyclif did for English. The Tus- 
can is the purest literary Italian. 

4 The hyena digs bodies from the grave. Boccaccio's tombstone was torn 
away by bigot spite. 

5 " His tomb was not allowed to claim a passing sigh because its inscrip- 
tion mentioned the name of the person for whom the sigh was claimed, viz., 
Boccaccio, the enemy of the monks " (Tozer). 

^ Byron called Santa Croce the Westminster Abbey of Italy. 
■^ Tacitus says the " bust was conspicuous by its absence." 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 107 

^ The immortal exile •} — Arqua, too, her store 

Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, 530 

While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps. 

LX. 

What is her pyramid of precious stones? 
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues 
Of gem and marble, to incrust the bones 
Of merchant dukes? ^ the momentary dews 535 

Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse 
Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, 
Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, 
Are gently pressed with far more reverent tread 
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head. 540 

LXI. 

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes 
In Arno's dome ^ of Art's most princely shrine, 
Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies ; 
There be more marvels yet— but not for mine ; 
For I have been accustomed to entwine 545 

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields. 
Than Art in galleries ; though a work divine 
Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields 
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields 

LXII. 

Is of another temper, and I roam 55qt 

By Thrasimene's lake,* in the defiles 

1 Dante, the greatest Italian poet. 

2 " I went to the Medici Chapel,— fine frippery, in great slabs of various 
expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses " 
(Byrox). 3 The Florence picture gallery. 

* Near which the Roman army was defeated by Hannibal. 



io8 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home ; 
For there the Carthaginian's warhke wiles 
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles 
The host between the mountains and the shore, 555 

Where Courage falls in her despairing files, 
And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, 
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er, 

LXIII. 

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds ; 
And such the storm of battle on this day, 560 

And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds 
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray. 
An earthquake reeled unheededly away ! ^ 
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, 
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay 565 

Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet ; 
S'uch is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet! 

LXIV. 

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark 
Which bore them to Eternity ; they saw 
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark 570 

The motions of their vessel ; Nature's law, 
In them suspended, recked not of the awe 
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds 
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw 
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds 575 
Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words. 

LXV. 

Far other scene is Thrasimene now ; 
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain 

1 An earthquake occurred while the battle was in progress. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 109 

Rent by no ravage save the gentle plow ; 
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain 580 

Lay where their roots are ; but a brook hath ta'en— 
A little rill of scanty stream and bed— 
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain ; 
And Sanguinetto 1 tells ye where the dead 
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red. 585 

LXVI. 

But thou, Clitumnus!^ in thy sweetest wave 
Of the most living crystal that was e'er 
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave 
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear 
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer 590 

Grazes;^ the purest god of gentle waters! 
And most serene of aspect, and most clear ; 
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, 
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters ! 

Lxvn. 

And on thy happy shore a Temple * still, 595 

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, 
Upon a mild declivity of hill. 
Its memory of thee ; beneath it sweeps 
Thy current's calmness ; oft from out it leaps 
The finny darter with the glittering scales, 600 

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps ; 
While, chance, some scattered water lily sails 
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. 

1 The name of a brook; from sanguis, " blood." 

2 A small branch of the Tiber. 

3 " Un watched, along CHtumnus 
Grazes the milk-white steer." 

Macaulay's Zaj's of Ancient Rome. 
4 A small chapel of white marble. 



no LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

LXVIII. 

Pass not unblessed the Genius of the place I^ 
If through the air a zephyr more serene 605 

Win to the brow, 'tis his ; and if ye trace 
Along his margin a more eloquent green, 
If on the heart the freshness of the scene 
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust 
Of weary life a moment lave it clean 6 1 o 

With Nature's baptism,— 'tis to him ye must 
Pay orisons ^ for this suspension of disgust. 

LXIX. 

The roar of waters! — from the headlong height 
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice ; 
The fall of waters! rapid as the hght 615 

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; 
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss. 
And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat 
Of their great agony, wrung out from this 
Their Phlegethon,^ curls round the rocks of jet 620 

That guard -the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, 

LXX. 

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round. 
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, 
Is an eternal April to the ground, 625 

Making it all one emerald : —how profound 
The gulf! and how the giant element 
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, 
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent! 630 

1 Pray to the local deity {genius loci). 2 Prayers. ^ A river in hell. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. iii 



LXXI. 

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 
More like the fountain of an infant sea 
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 
Of a new world, than only thus to be 

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, 635 

With many windings, through the vale:— Look back! 
Lo! where it comes like an eternity, 
As if to sweep down all things in its track, 
Charming the eye with dread, — a matchless cataract, 

LXXII. 

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, 640 

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn. 
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge. 
Like Hope upon a deathbed, and, unworn 
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 
By the distracted waters, bears serene 645 

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : 
Resembhng, 'mid the torture of the scene, 
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.^ 

LXXIII. 

Once more upon the woody Apennine, 

The infant Alps, which— had I not before 650 

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine 

Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar 

The thundering lauwine 2_might be worshiped more ; 

But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear 

1 The description of the waterfall of Terni, on the Velino River, deserves 
a very careful reading. 

2 " Byron did not know German. Had he done so he would not have 
used Lauwine, or Laiuinc, the ordinary German word for ' an avalanche,' as 
plural " (TozER). 



[2 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Her never-trodden 1 snow, and seen the hoar 655 

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, 

And in Chimari heard the thunder hills of fear, 

LXXIV. 

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name ; 
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly 

Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, 660 

For still they soared unutterably high : 
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;^ 
Athos, Olympus, ^tna, Atlas, made 
These hills seem things of lesser dignity. 
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed 665 

Not now ^ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid 

LXXV. 

For our remembrance, and from out the plain 
Heaves like along-swept wave about to break. 
And on the curl hangs pausing : not in vain 
May he, who will, his recollections rake, 670 

And quote in classic raptures, and awake 
The hills with Latian echoes ; I abhorred ^ 
Too much, to conquer for the poet's rake. 
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word 
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record 675 

LXXVI. 

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned 

My sickening memory ; and, though Time hath taught 

1 The Jungfrau has often been climbed. 

2 Mount Ida is above Troy, 

3 Horace mentions snow on Mount Soracte, a high hill near Rome. 

* This should interest teachers and students of poetry, especially of classic 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 113 

My mind to meditate what then it learned, 
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought 

By the impatience of my early thought, 680 

That, with the freshness wearing out before 
My mind could relish what it might have sought, 
If free to choose, I cannot now restore 
Its health ; but what it then detested, still abhor. 

LXXVII. 

Then farewell, Horace ; whom I hated so, ' 685 

Not for thy faults, but mine ; it is a curse 
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, 
To comprehend, but never love thy verse : 
Although no deeper Morahst rehearse 

Our httle life, nor Bard prescribe his art, 690 

Nor liveher Satirist the conscience pierce, 
Awakening without wounding the touched heart. 
Yet fare thee well — upon Soracte's ridge we part. 

LXXVIII. 

O Rome! my country! city of the soul! 

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 695 

Lone mother of dead empires! and control 

In their shut breasts their petty misery. 

verse. Mr. Rolfe says : " It is remarkable that this passage has not been 
quoted in the recent attacks upon the study of Latin and Greek in our schools. 
It might well be used ir. the criticism of the methods of study." Byron 
himself said: " I wish to express that we become tired of the task before we 
can comprehend the beauty ; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart ; 
that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage dead- 
ened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation at an age when we can neither 
feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaint- 
ance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish or to reason upon. For 
the same reason we never can be aware of the fullness of some of the finest 
passages of Shakespeare." 

8 



114 LORD BYRON. [caxto iv. 

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see 
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! 700 

Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

LXXIX. 

The Niobe^ of nations! there she stands, 
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe ; 
An empty urn within her withered hands, 705 

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago ; 
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now ; 
The very sepulchers lie tenantless 
Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow. 
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 710 

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

LXXX. 

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, 
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride ;2 
She saw her glories star by star expire. 
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, 7 1 5 

Where the car climbed the Capitol ; far and wide 
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : 
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, 
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, 
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night ? 720 

LXXXI. 

The double night of ages, and of her, 

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap 

1 The Greek goddess who mourned her twelve children, slain by Apollo 
and Artemis. (See mythology for this and many other classic allusions.) 

2 With the aid of some text-book on history, recount briefly the great 
events suggested in this and other following stanzas. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 115 

All round us : we but feel our way to err : 
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, 
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; 725 

But Rome is as the desert, where we steer 
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap 
Our hands, and cry " Eureka! " it is clear — 
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 

LXXXII. 

Alas! the lofty city! and alas! 730 

The trebly hundred triumphs!^ and the day 
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!^ 
Alas, for TuUy's ^ voice, and Vergil's lay, 
And Livy's pictured page! — but these shall be 735 

Her resurrection ; all beside — decay. 
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see. 
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! 

LXXXIII. 

O thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, 
Triumphant Sylla!"^ Thou, who didst subdue 740 

Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel 
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due 
Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew 
O'er prostrate Asia;— thou, who with thy frown 
Annihilated senates— Roman, too, 745 

With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down 
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown— 

1 " Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the number of triumphs " 
(Byron). 

2 The killing of Caesar. 3 Cicero. 

4 Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Roman statesman and general, who conquered 
Asia Minor. 



f 



Ii6 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

LXXXIV. 

The dictatorial wreath ^ — couldst thou divine 
To what would one day dwindle that which made 
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine 750 

By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? 
She who was named Eternal, and arrayed 
Her warriors but to conquer— she who veiled 
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed, 
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, 755 

Her rushing wings — Oh! she who was Almighty hailed! 

LXXXV. 

Sylla was first of victors ; but our own. 
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! —he 
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne 
Down to a block — immortal rebel! See 760 

What crimes it costs to be a moment free, 
And famous through all ages! but beneath 
His fate the moral lurks of destiny ; 

His day of double victory and death 2 764 

Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.^ 

LXXXVI. 

The third of the same moon whose former course 
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day 
Deposed him gently from his throne of force, 
And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. 

1 Sulla was made dictator B.C. 81, but resigned his great oflfice B.C. 79. 

2 Cromwell won the battle of Dunbar, September 3, 1650, that of Worces- 
ter, September 3, 165 1, and died September 3, 1658. 

3 This graphic summary of Cromwell's character and career is interesting ; 
is it just? Was Cromwell cruel? (See Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of 
Cromwell. ) 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 117 

And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, 770 
And all we deem delightful, and consume 
Our souls to compass through each arduous way, 
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? 
Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom! 

LXXXVII. 

And thou, dread statue l^ yet existent in 775 

The austerest form of naked majesty, 
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din, 
At thy bathed base the bloody Csesar lie, 
Folding his robe in dying dignity, 

An offering to thine altar from the queen 780 

Of gods and men, great Nemesis! 2 did he die, 
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been 
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene? 

LXXXVIII. 

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! 
She wolf I ^ whose brazen-imaged dugs impart 785 

The milk of conquest yet within the dome 
Where, as a monument of antique art. 
Thou standest: — Mother of the mighty heart. 
Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat, 
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, 790 

And thy limbs black with lightning — dost thou yet 
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget ? 

1 The statue of Pompey in the Spada Palace at Rome. 

" And in his mantle muffling up his face, 
Even at the base of Pompey's statua, 
Which all the while ran blood, great Csesar fell." 

Shakespeare's Julius Ccesai', iii. 2. 

2 The goddess of retribution. 

3 The bronze wolf, supposed to have been struck by lightning. 



ii8 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

LXXXIX. 

Thou dost ; but all thy foster babes are dead — 
The men of iron : and the world hath reared 
Cities from out their sepulchers : men bled 795 

In imitation of the things they feared, 
And fought and conquered, and the same course steered, 
At apish distance ; but as yet none have, 
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared. 
Save one vain man,i who is not in the grave, 800 

But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave — 

XC. 

The fool of false dominion— and a kind 
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old 
With steps unequal ; for the Roman's mind 
Was modeled in a less terrestrial mold, 805 

With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, 
And an immortal instinct which redeemed 
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold. 
Alcides 2 with the distaff now he seemed 
At Cleopatra's feet, — and now himself he beamed, 810 

XCI. 

And came— and saw— and conquered! But the man^ 

Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee. 

Like a trained falcon, in the GaUic* van, 

Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, 

With a deaf heart which never seemed to be 815 

A listener to itself, was strangely framed ; 

1 Napoleon. 2 Hercules held a distaff for Omphale, queen of Lydia. 

3 Napoleon. ^ French. 



CANTO IV. J CHILDE HAROLD. 119 

With but one weakest weakness— vanity : 
Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed — 
At what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed? 

XCII. 

And would be all or nothing — nor could wait 820 

For the sure grave to level him ; few years 
Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, 
On whom we tread : For this the conqueror rears 
The arch of triumph! and for this the tears 
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, 825 

An universal deluge, which appears 
Without an ark for wretched man's abode, 
And ebbs but to reflow! Renew thy rainbow, Godl^ 

XCIII.2 

What from this barren being do we reap? 
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, 830 

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, 
And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale ; 
Opinion an omnipotence, — whose veil 
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 835 

Lest their own judgments should become too bright. 
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much 
light. 

XCIV. 

And thus they plod in sluggish misery, 
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, 

1 Gen. ix. 13. Byron makes beautiful poetical use of the Scripture allu- 
sion here. 

2 Mark the fervid protest against oppression and wrong in Stanzas XCIII. 
and XCIV. Byron's was always a voice for liberty. 



>o LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 840 

Bequeathing their hereditary rage 
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 
War for their chains, and rather than be free, 
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 

Within the same arena where they see 845 

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. 

xcv. 

I speak not of men's creeds— they rest between 
Man and his Maker— but of things allowed. 
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen — 
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, , 850 

And the intent of tyranny avowed. 
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown 
The apes of him who humbled once the proud. 
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne : 
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. 855 

XCVI. 

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be. 
And Freedom find no champion and no child 
Such as Columbia ^ saw arise when she 
Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? 
Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, 860 

Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar 
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more 
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? 

XCVII. 

But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,^ 865 

And fatal have her Saturnalia been 

1 American students need no note to interpret this. 
? " A coarse but powerful image " (Keene). 



II 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 12 1 

To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime ; 
Because the deadly days which we have seen, 
And vile Ambition, that built up between 
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 870 

And the base pageant last upon the scene, 
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall 
Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's worst — his second fall. 

XCVIII.i 

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, 
Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind ; 875 

Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying. 
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind ; 
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind. 
Chopped by the ax, looks rough and little worth, 
But the sap lasts,— and still the seed we find 880 

Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North ; 
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 

XCIX.2 

There is a stem round tower of other days, 
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, 
Such as an army's baffled strength delays, 885 

Standing with half its battlements alone, 
And with two thousand years of ivy grown. 
The garland of eternity, where wave 
The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown ; — 
What was this tower of strength? within its cave 890 

What treasure lay so locked, so hid?— A woman's grave. 

1 A splendid stanza, —strong, true, and soul-stirring. Study its several bold 
metaphors, especially the first one. 

2 Here we have another of Byron's abrupt changes of theme. The six 
following stanzas are reflections on the tomb of Csecilia Metella, daughter of 
Metellus Creticus, and wife of M. Crassus, 



!2 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

c. 

But who was she, the lady of the dead, 
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair? 
Worthy a king's, or more— a Roman's bed? 
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear? 895 

What daughter of her beauties was the heir? 
How Hved, how loved, how died she? Was she not 
So honored — and conspicuously there, 
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, 
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot? 900 

CI. 

Was she as those who love their lords, or they 
Who love the lords of others? such have been 
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. 
Was she a matron of CorneHa's mien, 

Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, 905 

Profuse of joy — or 'gainst it did she war 
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean 
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar 
Love from amongst her griefs? — for such the affections are. 

CII. 

Perchance she died in youth : it may be, bowed 910 

With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud 
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom 
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom 
Heaven gives its favorites — early death; yet shed 915 

A sunset charm around her, and illume 
With hectic light, the Hesperus 1 of the dead. 
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaflike red. 

1 Evening star, 



CANTO IV.] 



CHILDE HAROLD. 123 



cm. 



Perchance she died in age— surviving all, 
Charms, kindred, children-with the silver gray 920 

On her long tresses, which might yet recall, 
It may be, still a something of the day 
When they were braided, and her proud array 
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
By Rome— But whither would Conjecture stray? 925 

Thus much alone we know— Metella died, 
The wealthiest Roman's 1 wife: Behold his love or pride! 

CIV. 

I know not why— but standing thus by thee 
It seems as if I had thine inmate known. 
Thou tomb! and other days come back on me 930 

With recollected music, though the tone 
Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan 
Of dying thunder on the distant wind ; 
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone 
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind 935 

Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind ; 

CV.2 

And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks, 

Built me a httle bark of hope, once more 

To battle with the ocean and the shocks 

Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar 94° 

Which rushes on the sohtary shore 

Where all hes foundered that was ever dear: 

1 " Crassus, whose agnomen was Dives" (Tozer). 

2 There is in this stanza a sweet sadness characteristic of Byron s gentlest 



mood. 



124 LORD BYRON, [canto iv. 

But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer? 944 

There wooes no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. 

CVI. 

Then let the winds howl on ! 1 their harmony- 
Shall henceforth be my m.usic, and the night 
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry, 
As I now hear them, in the fading light 
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, 950 

Answering each other on the Palatine,^ 
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright, 
And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine 
What are our petty griefs? — let me not number mine. 

CVII. 

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown 955 

Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped 
On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown 
In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped 
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped. 
Deeming it midnight: — Temples, baths, or halls? 960 

Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reaped 
From her research hath been, that these are walls — 
Behold the Imperial Mount !^ 'tis thus the mighty falls. 

CVIII. 

There is the moral of all human tales ; 

'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 965 

1 The passage beginning, "Then let the winds," and ending, "burns 
with Cicero," Stanzas CVI.-CXIL, is one of Byron's noblest, and one of the 
finest in English poetry. 2 One of Rome's seven hills. 

3 Augustus Caesar had his palace on this mount. 



J 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 125 

First Freedom, and then Glory— when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption,— barbarism at last. 
And History, with all her volumes vast. 
Hath but one page,— 'tis better written here 
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed 970 

All treasures, all deUghts, that eye or ear, 
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask- Away with words! draw 
near, 

CIX. 

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep,— for here 
There is such matter for all feeling:— Man! 
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,i 975 

Ages and realms are crowded in this span, 
This mountain, whose obliterated plan 
The pyramid of empires pinnacled. 
Of Glory's gewgaws - shining in the van 
Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled! 980 

Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build? 

ex. 

TuUy was not so eloquent as thou. 
Thou nameless column 3 with the buried base! 
What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow? 
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling place.* 9^5 

Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, 
Titus' or Trajan's? No— 'tis that of Time : 
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace 
Scoffing ; and apostoHc statues chmb 
To crush the imperial urn,^ whose ashes slept sublime, 990 

1 A famous line. 2 Happy alliteration. 

3 Now discovered to have been erected to Phocus, an emperor. 

4 A suggestive and beautiful line. 

5 The urn of Trajan was replaced by a statue of St. Peter. 



126 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

CXI. 

Buried in air, the deep-blue sky of Rome, 
And looking to the stars : they had contained 
A spirit which with these would find a home, 
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, 
The Roman globe, for after none sustained, 995 

But yielded back his conquests :— he was more 
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained 
With household blood and wine, serenely wore 
His sovereign virtues — still we Trajan's name adore. 



CXII. 

Where is the rock of Triumph,^ the high place 1000 

Where Rome embraced her heroes ? where the steep 
Tarpeian? fittest goal of Treason's race, 
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap 
Cured all ambition. Did the conquerors heap 
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below, 1005 

A thousand years of silenced factions sleep— 
The forum, where the immortal accents glow. 
And still the eloquent air breathes— burns ^ with Cicero! 



CXIII. 

The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood: 

Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, loio 

From the first hour of empire in the bud 

To that when further worlds to conquer failed ; 

1 The Tarpeian Rock. What says Roman history of it? 

2 "Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn" (Gray's Progress of 
Poesy, line no). 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 127 

But long before had Freedom's face been veiled, 
And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; 

Till every lawless soldier who assailed 1015 

Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes, 
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.^ 



CXIV. 

Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, 
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee. 
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame — 1020 

The friend of Petrarch— hope of Italy — 
Rienzi!^ last of Romans! While the tree 
Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, 
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be — 
The forum's champion, and the people's chief — 1025 

Her new-born Numa^ thou — with reign, alas! too brief. 



cxv. 

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart 
Which found no mortal resting place so fair 
As thine ideal breast ; whate'er thou art 
Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air, 1030 

The nympholepsy * of some fond despair ; 
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, 
Who found a more than common votary there 
Too much adoring ; whatsoe'er thy birth. 
Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. 1035 

1 This stanza briefly describes the decline of the Roman empire. 

2 Every schoolboy knows Miss Mitford's "I come not here to talk." 
Read Gibbon's entertaining chapter on Rienzi. 

3 Rome's (legendary) second king. He is fabled to have wedded the 
nymph Egeria. Much poetry has been written about Egeria. 

4 " An ecstasy; a divine frenzy" (Century Dictionary). 



128 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

CXVI. 

The mosses of thy fountain i still are sprinkled 
With thine Elysian waterdrops ; the face 
Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, 
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, 
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase 1040 

Art's works ; nor must the delicate waters sleep, 
Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base 
Of the cleft statue,^ with a gentle leap 
The rill runs o'er, and round fern, flowers, and ivy creep, 

CXVII. 

Fantastically tangled: the green hills 1045 

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass 
The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills 
Of summer birds sing welcome as ye pass ; 
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, 
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes 1050 

Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass ; 
The sweetness of the violet's deep-blue eyes. 
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems colored by its skies. 

CXVIII. 

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, 

Egeria! thy all-heavenly bosom beating 1055 

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover ; 

The purple Midnight ^ veiled that mystic meeting 

1 The " grotto of Egeria" is near Rome. 

2 A broken statue near the fountain. 

3 " Allusion to the warm darkness of southern night, so different from the 
steely blue of high latitudes " (Keene). 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 129 

With her most starry canopy, and seating 
Thyself by thine adorer, what befell ? 

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting 1060 

Of an enamored goddess, and the cell 
Haunted by holy Love — the earliest oracle! 

CXIX. 

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, 
Blend a celestial with a human heart ; 

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, 1065 

Share with immortal transports? could thine art 
Make them indeed immortal, and impart 
The purity of heaven to earthly joys, 
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart — 
The dull satiety which all destroys— 1070 

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? 

cxx. 

Alas! our young affections run to waste, 
Or water but the desert ; whence arise 
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, 
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, 1075 

Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies. 
And trees whose gums are poison ; such the plants 
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies 
O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants 
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. 1080 

CXXI. 

O Love ! no habitant of earth thou art— 
An unseen seraph, we beheve in thee,— 
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,— 
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see 

9 



13© LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

The naked eye, thy form, as it should be ; 1085 

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, 
Even with its own desiring fantasy, 
And to a thought such shape and image given. 
As haunts the unquenched soul — parched, wearied, wrung, 
and riven. 

CXXII. 

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, 1090 

And fevers into false creation: — where, 
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? 
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? 
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare 
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, 1095 

The unreached Paradise of our despair. 
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, 
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? 

CXXIII. 

Who loves, raves — 'tis youth's frenzy — but the cure 
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds 11 00 

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure 
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's 
Ideal shape of such ; yet still it binds 
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on. 
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds ;i 1105 

The stubborn heart, its alchemy ^ begun, 
Seems ever near the prize—wealthiest when most undone. 

CXXIV.^ 

We wither from our youth, we gasp away — 

Sick — sick ; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst, 

1 Hosea viii. 7. 2 Changing base metals into gold. 

3 Fine poetry, but morose thought. 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 131 

Though to the last, in verge of our decay, mo 

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first — 
But all too late,— so are we doubly cursed. 
Love, fame, ambition, avarice — 'tis the same. 
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst— 
For all are meteors with a different name, 1 1 1 5 

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. 

CXXV.i 

Few — none— find what they love or could have loved, 
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong 
Necessity of loving, have removed 

Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, 11 20 

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong ; 
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god 
And miscreator, makes and helps along 
Our coming evils with a crutchlike rod, 1 1 24 

Whose touch turns Hope to dust,— the dust we all have trod. 

CXXVI. 

Our life is a false nature : 'tis not in 
The harmony of things, — this hard decree, 
This uneradicable taint of sin. 
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree. 
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 1130 
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew- 
Disease, death, bondage— all the woes we see, 
And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through 
The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new. 

CXXVII. 

Yet let us ponder boldly— 'tis a base 1135 

Abandonment of reason to resign 

1 This is a personal wail. 



132 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Our right of thought — our last and only place 
Of refuge ; this, at least, shall still be mine : 
Though from our birth the faculty divine 
Is chained and tortured — cabined, cribbed, confined,^ 1140 
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too brightly on the unprepared mind, 
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch - the blind. 

CXXVIII.3 

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, 
Collecting the chief trophies of her line, 1 145 

Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, 
Her Coliseum stands ; the moonbeams shine 
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine 
Should be the light which streams here to illume 
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine 11 50 

Of contemplation ; and the azure gloom 
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume 

CXXIX. 

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven. 
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument. 
And shadows forth its glory. There is given 11 55 

Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, 
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant 
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power 
And magic in the ruined battlement. 

For which the palace of the present hour 1160 

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. 

1 Cf. Macbeth, iii. iv. 

2 " Couch " here means to remove a cataract from the eye. 

3 Byron's melancholy musings now seek solace in contemplating the ruins 
of the Coliseum. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 1^:^ 

cxxx. 

O Time! the beautifier of the dead, 
Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
And only healer when the heart hath bled ; 
Time! the corrector where our judgments err, 1165 

The test of truth, love — sole philosopher, 
For all beside are sophists — from thy thrift, 
Which never loses though it doth defer — 
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift 
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift : 1 170 

CXXXI. 

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine 
And temple more divinely desolate, 
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine. 
Ruins of years, though few, yet full of fate : 
If thou hast ever seen me too elate, 1175 

Hear me not ; but if calmly I have borne 
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate 
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn 
This iron in my soul in vain — shall they not mourn? ^ 

CXXXII. 

And thou, who never yet of human wrong 1180 

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! 

Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long— 

Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss. 

And round Orestes 2 bade them howl and hiss 

For that unnatural retribution— just, 1185 

1 Is not this vindictive? 

2 Orestes was pursued by the Furies for having slain his mother. 



134 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Had it but been from hands less near— in this 
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust ! 
Dost thou not hear my heart?— Awake! thou shaU, and must. 

CXXXIII. 

It is not that I may not have incurred 
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound 1190 

I bleed withal, and, had it been conferred 
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound ; 
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground ; 
To thee I do devote it — thou shalt take 
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, 1195 
Which if /have not taken for the sake— 
But let that pass— I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. 

CXXXIV. 

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 
I shrink from what is suffered : let him speak 
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, 1200 

Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak ; 
But in this page a record will I seek. 
Not in the air shall these my words disperse, 
Though I be ashes ; a far hour shall wreak 
The deep prophetic fullness of this verse, 1205 

And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse! 

cxxxv. 

That curse shall be Forgiveness.^— Have I not — 

Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! — 

Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? 

Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? 12 10 

1 A critic aptly calls this passage a " boisterous pardon." 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 135 

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, 
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life hed away? 
And only not to desperation driven, 
Because not altogether of such clay 
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. 121 5 

CXXXVI. 

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy 
Have I not seen what human things could do? 
From the loud roar of foaming calumny 1 
To the small whisper of the as paltry few, 
And subtler venom of the reptile crew, 1220 

The Janus ^ glance of whose significant eye. 
Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, 
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, 
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. 

CXXXVII. 

But I have lived, and have not hved in vain : 1225 

My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, 
And my frame perish even in conquering pain ; 
But there is that within me which shall tire 
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire ; 
Something unearthly, which they deem not of, i2.':?o 

Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre. 
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move 
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. 

CXXXVHL 

The seal is set.^ — Now welcome, thou dread power! 
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here 1235 

1 A felicitous line. 2 The two-faced god. 

3 Keene quotes Sir Walter Scott's " A minstrel's malison is set." 



136 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour 
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear ; 
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear 
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene 
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear 1240 

That we become a part of what has been, 
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen. 

CXXXIX. 

And here the buzz of eager nations ran, 
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, 
As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. 1245 

And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because 
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, 
And the imperial pleasure.— Wherefore not? 
What matters where we fall to fill the maws 1 
Of worms— on battle plains or Hsted spot? 1250 

Both are but theaters where the chief actors rot. 

CXL. 

I see before me the Gladiator lie :2 
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony. 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 1255 

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one. 
Like the first of a thundershower ; and now 
The arena swims around him — he is gone. 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who 
won. 1260 

1 " Our monuments shall be the maws of kites " (Macbeth, iii. iv.). 

2 Copies in plaster of The Dying Gladiator, a statue in the museum at 
Rome, may be seen in most art galleries. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 137 

CXLL 

He heard it, but he heeded not— his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
He recked not of the hfe he lost nor prize. 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
There were his young barbarians all at play, 1265 

There was their Dacian mother— he, their sire. 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday — 
All this rushed with his blood— Shall he expire. 
And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, 1 and glut your ire 

CXLH. 

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam ; 1270 
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, 
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream 
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays ; 
Here, where the Roman milHon's blame or praise 
Was death or Hfe, the playthings of a crowd, 1275 

My voice sounds much-— and fall the stars' faint rays 
On the arena void — seats crushed — walls bowed — 
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 

cxLin. 

A ruin — yet what ruin! from its mass 

Walls, palaces, half cities, have been reared ;3 1280 

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, 

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. 

Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? 

Alas! developed, opens the decay, 

1 Did the Goths rise and glut their ire? 

2 I.e., in the silence of the solitary place. 

3 Read what Gibbon and others have written on the Coliseum. 



138 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

When the colossal fabric's form is neared : 1285 

It will not bear the brightness of the day, 
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away. 

CXLIV. 

But when the rising moon begins to climb 
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ; 
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, 1290 
And the low night breeze waves along the air 
The garland forest, which the gray walls wear, 
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head ; 
When the light shines serene, but doth not glare, 
Then in this magic circle raise the dead: 1295 

Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread. 

CXLV. 

" While stands the Cohseum, Rome shall stand ; 
When falls the Cohseum, Rome shall fall ; 
And when Rome falls — the World." ^ From our own land 
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 1300 

In Saxon times, which we are wont to call 
Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still 
On their foundations, and unaltered all ; 
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, 1304 

The World, the same wide den— of thieves, or what ye will. 

CXLVI. 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime ^ — 
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, 

1 " This is quoted in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a proof 
that the Coliseum was entire when seen by the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims at the 
end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century " (Byron). 

2 The Pantheon was built B.C. 27. 



I 



I 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 139 

From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time ; 
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 1310 
His way through thorns to ashes— glorious dome! 
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods 
Shiver upon thee— sanctuary and home 
Of art and piety— Pantheon! —pride of Rome! 

CXLVII. 

ReHc of nobler days, and noblest arts! 131 5 

Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads 
A holiness appealing to all hearts — 
To art a model ; and to him who treads 
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds 
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those 1320 

Who worship, here are altars for their beads ; 
And they who feel for genius may repose 
Their eyes on honored forms, whose busts around them close. 

CXLVIII. 

Ther^is a dungeon, ^ in whose dim, drear light 
What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again! 1325 

Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight — 
Two insulated phantoms of the brain : 
It is not so ; I see them full and plain — 
An old man, and a female young and fair, 
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein '^ZZ^ 

The blood is nectar : —but what doth she there, 
With her unman tied neck, and bosom white and bare? 

1 Byron says : " This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the 
Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveler by the site, or pretended 
site, of that adventure, now shown at the Church of St. Nicholas in Carcere.'' 
Tozer tells us that the same story of the young mother feeding her father 
with her own milk " is found elsewhere in various countries." 



140 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

CXLIX. 

Full swells the deep, pure fountain of young life, 
Where on the heart din6.from the heart we took 
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, i335 

Blest into mother, in the innocent look. 
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook 
No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives 
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook 
She sees her Httle bud put forth its leaves— 1340 

What may the fruit be yet ? I know not— Cain was Eve's. 

CL. 

But here youth offers to old age the food. 
The milk of his own gift : it is her sire 
To whom she renders back the debt of blood 
Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire 1345 

While in those warm and lovely veins the fire 
Of health and holy feeling can provide 
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher 
Than Egypt's river : from that gentle side •• 

Drink, drink and live, old man ! Heaven's realm holds no 

such tide. 1350 

CLI. 

The starry fable of the milky way ^ 

Has not thy story's purity ; it is 

A constellation of a sweeter ray. 

And sacred Nature triumphs more in this 

Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss 1355 

Where sparkle distant worlds: — Oh, holiest nurse! 

1 The fable that milk spilled from the breast of Juno produced the Milky 
Way. 



I 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 141 

No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss 
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source 
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. 

CLII. 

Tarn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,i 1360 
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,^ 
Colossal copyist of deformity, 
Whose traveled fantasy from the far Nile's 
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils 
To build for giants, and for his vain earth, 1365 

His shrunken ashes, raise this dome: How smiles 
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth. 
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth! 

CLHI. 

But lo! the dome^ — the vast and wondrous dome, 
To which Diana's marvel* was a cell — 1370 

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! 
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle ; — 
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell 
The hyena and the jackal in their shade ; 
I have beheld Sophia's ^ bright roofs swell 1375 

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed 
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed ; 

CLIV. 

But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee— 

1 Now the castle of St. Angelo, once the mausoleum of Hadrian. 

2 The pyramids. 3 St. Peter's at Rome. 

4 The temple of Diana at Ephesus. 

5 The gilded dome of St. Sophia's, Constantinople. The church is now 
a mosque. 



142 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 1380 

Since Zion's desolation,^ when that He 
Forsook His former city, what could be, 
Of earthly structures, in His honor piled, 
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, 

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty all are aisled 1385 

In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. 

CLV. 

Enter : its grandeur overwhelms thee not ; 
And why? It is not lessened ; but thy mind, 
Expanded by the genius of the spot. 

Has grown colossal, and can only find 1390 

A fit abode wherein appear enshrined 
Thy hopes of immortality ; and thou 
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined. 
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
His Holy of HoHes, nor be blasted by his brow. 1395 

CLVI. 

Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, 
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, 
Deceived by its gigantic elegance ; 
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize- 
All musical in its immensities; 1400 
Rich marbles, richer painting — shrines where flame 
The lamps of gold — and haughty dome which vies 
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame 
Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must claim. 

CLVII. 

Thou seest not all ; but piecemeal thou must break, 1405 
To separate contemplation, the great whole ; 
1 The Jewish temple at Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans A. D. 70. 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 1 43 

And as the ocean many bays will make 
That ask the eye — so here condense thy soul 
To more immediate objects, and control 
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart 14 10 

Its eloquent proportions, and unroll 
In mighty graduations, part by part, 
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, 

CLVIII. 

Not by its fault— but thine : Our outward sense 
Is but of gradual grasp — and as it is 141 5 

That what we have of feeling most intense 
Outstrips our faint expression ; even so this 
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice 
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great 
Defies at first our Nature's littleness, 1420 

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate 
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. 

CLIX. 

Then pause, and be enlightened ; there is more 
In such a survey than the sating gaze 

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore 1425 

The worship of the place, or the mere praise 
Of art and its great masters, who could raise 
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan ; 
The fountain of sublimity displays 

Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man 1430 

Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. 

CLX. 

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain^ — 
1 The original Laocoon group is in the Vatican. (See ^.neid, ii. , for the story. ) 



144 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

A father's love and mortal's agony 

With an immortal's patience blending: Vain 1435 

The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain 
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 
The old man's clinch ; the long envenomed chain 
Rivets the hving links, — the enormous asp 
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. 1440 

CLXI. 

Or view the lord of the unerring bow,^ 
The god of life, and poesy, and light — 
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow- 
All radiant from his triumph in the fight ; 
The shaft hath just been shot— the arrow bright 1445 

With an immortal's vengeance ; in his eye 
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might 
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
Developing in that one glance the Deity. 

CLXIL 

But in his delicate form— a dream of lo^^e, 1450 

Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast 
Longed for a deathless lover from above, 
And maddened in that vision — are expressed 
All that ideal beauty ever blessed 

The mind within its most unearthly mood, 1455 

When each conception was a heavenly guest — 
A ray of immortality — and stood 
Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god! 

CLXIII. 

And if it be Prometheus 2 stole from heaven 

The fire which we endure, it was repaid 1460 

1 The Apollo Belvedere. 

2 Read Longfellow's poem, Prometheus, or the Poet's Forethought. 



CANTO IV. J CHILDE HAROLD. 145 

By him to whom the energy was given 
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed 
With an eternal glory— which, if made 
By human hands, is not of human thought ; 
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid 1465 

One ringlet in the dust— nor hath it caught 
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas 
wrought. 

CLXIV. 

But where is he, the Pilgrim 1 of my song, 
The being who upheld it through the past? 
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. 1470 

He is no more — these breathings are his last ; 
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, 
And he himself as nothing: — if he was 
Aught but a fantasy, and could be classed 
With forms which live and suffer- let that pass— 1475 

His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, 

CLXV. 

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all 
That we inherit in its mortal shroud. 

And spreads the dim and universal pall ^479 

Through which all things grow phantoms ; and the cloud 
Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, 
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays 
A melancholy halo scarce allowed 
To hover on the verge of darkness ; rays 
Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, 1485 

CLXVI. 

And send us prying into the abyss. 

To gather what we shall be when the frame 

1 Childe Harold, last mentioned in Canto III. Stanza LV. 
10 



146 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Shall be resolved to something less than this 
Its wretched essence ; and to dream of fame, 
And wipe the dust from off the idle name 1490 

We nevermore shall hear, — but nevermore, 
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same : 
It is enough, in sooth, that once we bore 
These fardels 1 of the heart— the heart ^.vhose sweat was gore. 

CLXVIL2 

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, i495 

A long low distant murmur of dread sound, 
Such as arises when a nation bleeds 
With some deep and immedicable wound ; 
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground, 
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief 1500 

Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned. 
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief 
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. 

CLXVIII. 

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? 

Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? 1505 

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 

Some less majestic, less beloved head? 

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled. 

The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy, 

1 Troubles. "Who would fardels bear," etc. (Hamlet, iii. i.). 

2 " From the thought of death the poet passes to the death of the Princess 
Charlotte, which happened when he was at Venice. No other event during 
the present century has caused so great a shock to public feeling in England ; 
and Byron himself, as we learn from his letters, was deeply moved by it. 
She was the only daughter of George IV., who at that time was prince regent, 
and consequently she was heiress presumptive to the British crown " (Tozer). 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 147 

Death hushed that pang forever : with thee fled 1 5 1 o 

The present happiness and promised joy 
Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy. 

CLXIX. 

Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be, 
O thou that wert so happy, so adored! 
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, 1 5 1 5 
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard 
Her many griefs for One ; for she had poured 
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head 
Beheld her Iris.^ — Thou, too, lonely lord. 
And desolate consort— vainly wert thou wedl 1520 

The husband of a year! the father of the dead! 

CLXX. 

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made ; 
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes : in the dust 
The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid, 
The love of miUions! How we did intrust 1525 

Futurity to her! and, though it must 
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed 
Our children should obey her child, and blessed 
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed 1529 
Like stars to shepherds' eyes:— 'twas but a meteor beamed. 

CLXXI. 

Woe unto us, not her ; for she sleeps well : 
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue 
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, 
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung 

1 The rainbow, emblem of hope. 



148 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrung 1535 

Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate 
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung 
Against their Wind omnipotence a weight 
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, — 

CLXXII. 

These might have been her destiny ; but no, 1540 

Our hearts deny it : and so young, so fair, 
Good without efl'ort, great without a foe ; 
But now a bride and mother — and now there ! 
How many ties did that stern moment tear! 
From thy sire's to his humblest subject's breast 1545 

Is linked the electric chain of that despair, 
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressed 
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best. 

CLXXIII. 

Lo, Nemil^ naveled in the woody hills 
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears 1550 

The oak from his foundation, and which spills 
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears 
Its form against the skies, reluctant spares 
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake ; 

And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears 1555 

A deep cold settled aspect naught can shake. 
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 

CLXXIV. 

And near, Albano's ^ scarce divided waves 
Shine from a sister valley; — and afar 

1 " The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and from 
the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day 
its distinctive appellation of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from 
the comfortable inn of Albano " (Byron). 2 A lake in the Alban Hill. 



CANTO IV.] CHILD E HAROLD. 149 

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves 1560 

The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, 
" Arms and the man," whose reascending star 
Rose o'er an empire : —but beneath thy right 
Tully reposed from Rome ; — and where yon bai 
Of girdhng mountains intercepts the sight 1565 

The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's deUght. 

CLXXV. 

But I forget. — My Pilgrim's shrine is won. 
And he and I must part, — so let it be, — 
His task and mine alike are nearly done ; 
Yet once more let us look upon the sea; 1570 

The midland ocean ^ breaks on him and me, 
And from the Alban Mount we now behold 
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we 
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock 2 unfold 
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled 1575 

CLXXVI. 

Upon the blue Symplegades:^ long years- 
Long, though not very many— since have done 
Their work on both ; some suffering and some tears 
Have left us nearly where we had begun : 
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run ; 1580 

We have had our reward, and it is here,— 
That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun, 
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear 
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. 

CLXXVII. 

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling place, 1585 

With one fair Spirit for my minister, 

1 The Mediterranean. 2 Gibraltar. 

3 Two small islands at the entrance of the Black Sea from the Bosporus. 



150 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

That I might all forget the human race, 
And hating no one, love but only her! 
Ye Elements! — in whose ennobhng stir 
I feel myself exalted — can ye not 1590 

Accord me such a being? Do I err 
In deeming such inhabit many a spot? 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 

CLXXVIII.i 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 1595 

There is society, where none intrudes. 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more. 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 1600 

To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

CLXXIX. 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean— roll! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 1605 

Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 16 10 

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. 

CLXXX. 

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields 
Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise 

1 " Stanzas CLXXVIII.-CLXXXIV. form a splendid passage that has 
long been classical " (Keene). 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 151 

And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 161 5 

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray 
And howhng, to his Gods, where haply Hes 
His petty hope in some near port or bay. 
And dashest him again to earth: — there let him lay. 1620 

CLXXXI. 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake. 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals. 
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 1625 

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war— 
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Ahke the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. 

CLXXXII. 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— 1630 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? 
Thy waters washed them power while they were free, 
And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts:— not so thou; — 1635 

Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, 
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow : 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

CLXXXIII. 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,— 1640 

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 



52 LORD BYRON. [canto iv. 

Dark-heaving— boundless, endless, and sublime, 
The image of eternity, the throne 

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 1645 

The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

CLXXXIV. 

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
Borne, Hke thy bubbles, onward: from a boy 1650 

I wantoned with thy breakers— they to me 
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 
Made them a terror— 'twas a pleasing fear, 
For I was as it were a child of thee. 

And trusted to thy billows far and near, 1655 

And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 

CLXXXV. 

My task is done, my song hath ceased, my theme 
Has died into an echo ; it is fit 
The spell should break of this protracted dream. 
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit 1660 

My midnight lamp— and what is writ, is writ; 
Would it were worthier! but I am not now 
That which I have been — and my visions flit 
Less palpably before me — and the glow 
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. 1665 

CLXXXVI. 

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been — 
A sound which makes us Hnger;— yet— farewell! 



CANTO IV.] CHILDE HAROLD. 153 

Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene 
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell 
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell 1670 

A single recollection, not in vain 
He wore his sandal shoon and scallop shell ; 
Farewell! with hwi alone may rest the pain. 
If such there were— with jj^^z/, the moral of his strain. 



SONG OF THE GREEK BARD. 



FROM THE THIRD CANTO OF "DON JUAN." 

I. 

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 

Where burning Sappho ^ loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, 

Where Delos^ rose, and Phoebus ^ sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet, 5 

But all, except their sun, is set. 

2. 

The Scian ^ and the Teian * muse. 

The hero's harp, the lover's lute. 
Have found the fame your shores refuse : 

Their place of birth alone is mute 10 

1 A Greek poetess who was in the zenith of her fame about B.C. 600. 
" The glory of Lesbos (Mitylene) was that Sappho was its citizen, and its 
chief fame centers in the fact of her celebrity." The poet Swinburne calls 
Sappho 

" Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, 
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love." 

2 An island fabled to have been raised from the sea by Neptune for Latona, 
mother of the twin children Apollo (Phoebus) and Diana, born on Delos. 

3 Homer, born at Scio. 

* Anacreon, born on the isle of Teos. 

154 



n 



SONG OF THE GREEK BARD. 1 55 

To sounds which echo further west 
Than your sires' " Islands of the Blest." ^ 

3- 

The mountains look on Marathon 2— 

And Marathon looks on the sea ; 
And musing there an hour alone, 1 5 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free ; 
For standing on the Persians' grave, 
I could not deem myself a slave. 

4- 

A king ^ sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ;* 20 

And ships, by thousands, lay below. 

And men in nations ;— all were his! 
He counted them at break of day— 
And when the sun set where were they? 

5- 

And where are they? and where art thou, 25 

My country? On thy voiceless shore 

The heroic lay is tuneless now— 
The heroic bosom beats no more! 

And must thy lyre, so long divine. 

Degenerate into hands like mine? 3° 

1 " The vfiGOi iiampuv of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the 
Cape Verde Islands or the Canaries " (Byron). 

2 In Attica, -the scene of one of the world's decisive battles. Here, m 
BC 490 11,000 Greeks under Mihiades defeated 100,000 Persians. On 
this and the other historic events mentioned in the poem, consult some good 
Greek history. 

3 Xerxes, king of the Persians. 

4 An island of ancient Greece, opposite Athens, -the scene of the famous 
victory over the Persians by the Greek fleet under Themistocles, B.C. 480. 



156 LORD BYRON. 

6. 

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, 

Though Hnked among a fettered race, 
To feel at least a patriot's shame, 

Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; 
For what is left the poet here? 35 

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear.^ 

7- 
Must we but weep o'er days more blest? 

Must we but blush? — Our fathers bled. 
Earth! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead! 40 

Of the three hundred grant but three, 
To make a new Thermopylae ! 2 

8. 

What, silent still? and silent all? 

Ah! no ; — the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 45 

And answer, " Let one living head,^ 
But one arise, — we come, we come!" 
'Tis but the hving who are dumb. 

1 Byron, in Don Juan, Canto III. Stanza LXXXVIL, thus refers to his 
Greek Bard : 

" Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, 

The modern Greek, in tolerable verse ; 
If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, 

Yet in these times he might have done much worse : 
His strain displayed some feeling — right or wrong; 

And feeling, in a poet, is the source 
Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, 
And take all colors— like the hands of dyers." 

2 A narrow pass— the only road from northern to southern Greece, de- 1 1 
fended by the Spartan leader Leonidas against the Persians, B.C. 480. 

3 What did Byron himself do for the Greek cause ? 



II 



SONG OF THE GREEK BARD. 157 

9- 

In vain— in vain : strike other chords ; 

Fill high the cup with Samian ^ wine! 50 

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, 

And shed the blood of Scio's^ vine! 
Hark! rising to the ignoble call — 
How answers each bold Bacchanal I^ 



You have the Pyrrhic* dance as yet; 55 

Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? 
Of two such lessons, why forget 

The nobler and the manlier one? 
You have the letters Cadmus ^ gave — 
Think ye he meant them for a slave? 60 

II. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 

We will not think of themes hke these! 
It made Anacreon's song divine : 

He served— but served Polycrates^ — 
A tyrant ; but our masters then 65 

Were still, at least, our countrymen. 

1 Of Samos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor. 

2 A city noted for its wine, situated on an island of the same name in the 
^gean Sea. 

3 A devotee of Bacchus. 

4 Byron saw and described 

" The Pyrrhic dance so martial, 

To which the Levantines are very partial." 

The Greeks learned the use of the phalanx and the war dance from Pyr- 
rhus, king of Epirus. 

5 Cadmus, a Phoenician, is said to have brought the alphabet to Greece. 

6 Polycrates, tyrant of the island of Samos, in the iEgean Sea, was a 
patron of literature. 



158 LORD BYRON. 

12. 

The tyrant of the Chersonese ^ 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend ; 

That tyrant was Miltiades!^ 

Oh! that the present hour would lend 70 

Another despot of the kind! 

Such chains as his were sure to bind. 

13- 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 

On Suli's rock,3 and Parga's * shore, 
Exists the remnant of a line 75 

Such as the Doric mothers bore ; 
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, 
The Heracleidan » blood might own. 

14. 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks ^ — 

They have a king who buys and sells ; 80 

In native swords, and native ranks. 
The only hope of courage dwells : 

But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, 

Would break your shield, however broad.'' 



15- 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! 85 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade— 

1 A peninsula of Greece. 

2 The leader of the Greeks at Marathon, 

3 A famous fortress in Epirus. 
* A fortified town in Turkey. 

5 Descended from Hercules, who was of Doric origin. 

6 Inhabitants of France. 

7 Did not Turkish force, Latin fraud, and Greek cowardice break the 
Greek shield in 1897? 



SONG OF THE GREEK BARD. 159 

I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 
But gazing on each glowing maid, 
My own the burning tear-drop laves, 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 90 

16. 

Place me on Sunium's ^ marbled steep. 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ; 
There, swanhke, let me sing and die : 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — 95 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! 

1 Cape Sunium or Colonna, a rocky promontory. Byron alludes to some 
lines of Sophocles, in the tragedy of Ajax, in which a hero says : " Let me be 
where is the surf-beaten promontory of the sea, under the lofty hill of Su- 
nium." 

General Note.— The impassioned eloquence of this unique poem is won- 
derfully effective. As The Prisoner of Chillon is the least Byronic of the 
author's best poems, this may be said to be the most Byronic. Besides its 
supreme merit as a work of literary art, the brilliant lyric affords many his- 
torical data, and furnishes a fruitful theme not only for a lesson, but for a 
whole lecture, on Greece, ancient and modern, her wars, heroes, poets, and 
patriotic struggles, which seem destined never to end. The poem should be 
" committed to memory," and, what is better, " learned by heart." 



DARKNESS. 



I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. 
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars 
Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 
Rayless, and pathless ; and the icy earth 
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air ; 5 

Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day, 
And men forgot their passions in the dread 
Of this their desolation ; and all hearts 
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light : 
And they did live by watch fires — and the thrones, 10 

The palaces of crowned kings— the huts. 
The habitations of all things which dwell. 
Were burnt for beacons ; cities were consumed, 
And men were gathered round their blazing homes 
To look once more into each other's face ; 1 5 

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye 
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain torch : 
A fearful hope was all the world contained ; 
Forests were set on fire— but hour by hour 
They fell and faded— and the crackling trunks 20 

Extinguished with a crash— and all was black. 
The brows of men by the despairing light 
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits 
The flashes fell upon them ; some lay down 
160 



DARKNESS. l6l 

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest 25 

Their chins upon their dinched hands, and smiled ; 

And others hurried to and fro, and fed 

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up 

With mad disquietude on the dull sky. 

The pall of a past world ; and then again 30 

With curses cast them down upon the dust, 

And gnashed their teeth and howled : the wild birds shrieked. 

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, 

And flap their useless wings ; the wildest brutes 

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled 35 

And twined themselves among the multitude, 

Hissing, but stingless — they were slain for food! 

And War, which for a moment was no more, 

Did glut himself again : — a meal was bought • 

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 40 

Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left ; 

All earth was but one thought — and that was death 

Immediate and inglorious ; and the pang 

Of famine fed upon all entrails — men 

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; 45 

The meager by the meager were devoured. 

Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, 

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept 

The birds and beasts and famished men at bay, 

Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead 50 

Lured their lank jaws ; himself sought out no food, 

But with a piteous and perpetual moan. 

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand 

W^hich answered not with a caress — he died. 

The crowd was famished by degrees ; but two 55 

Of an enormous city did survive, 

And they were enemies : they met beside 

The dying embers of an altar place 

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things 

II 



1 62 LORD BYRON. 

For an unholy usage ; they raked up, 60 

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands 

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath 

Blew for a little life, and made a flame 

Which was a mockery ; then they lifted up 

Their eyes as it grew hghter, and beheld 65 

Each other's aspects — saw, and shrieked, and died— 

Even of their mutual hideousness they died. 

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow 

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, 

The populous and the powerful was a lump, 70 

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless, 

A lump of death— a chaos of hard clay. 

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, 

And nothing stirred within their silent depths ; 

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, 75 

And their masts fell down piecemeal : as they dropped 

They slept on the abyss without a surge — 

The waves were dead ; the tides were in their grave, 

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before ; 

The winds were withered in the stagnant air, 80 

And the clouds perished ; Darkness had no need 

Of aid from them — She was the Universe! 

DiODATi, July, 1816. 



II 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SEN 
NACHERIB.^ 



I. 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; 
And the sheen of their spears was hke stars on the sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

II. 

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, 5 

That host with their banners at sunset were seen : 
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. 

IIL 

For the Angel of Death 2 spread his wings on the blast, 
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; i o 

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 
* And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still! 

1 This musical lyric is a good specimen of Byron's Hebrew Melodies, of 
which there are twenty, a few of the most noted being those entitled Vision of 
Belshazzar, She Walks in Beauty, and The Wild Gazelle. Compare the poem 
with Thomas Moore's Sound the Loud Timbrel, a still finer Hebrew melody. 
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, reigned from B.C. 705 to 681. 

2 " And tlie Lord sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valor, 

163 



1 64 LORD BYRON. 

IV. 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all vade, 
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride ; 
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, 1 5 

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 

V. 

And there lay the rider distorted and pale, 

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail : 

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 

The lances unhfted, the trumpet unblown. 20 

VI. 

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail. 
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; 
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword. 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! 

and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he re- 
turned with shame of face to his own land" (II. Chronicles xxxii. 21). 



TO THOMAS MOORE/ 



I. 



My boat is on the shore, 
And my bark is on the sea ; 

But, before I go, Tom Moore, 
Here's a double health to thee! 



II. 

Here's a sigh to those who love me, 
And a smile to those who hate ; 

And, whatever sky's above me. 
Here's a heart for every fate. 



III. 

Though the ocean roar around me, 

Yet it still shall bear me on ; lo 

Though a desert should surround me. 
It hath springs that may be won. 

1 Thomas Moore, Byron's friend and biographer, an Irish poet (born 
1779, died 1852), author of many beautiful songs. 

165 



66 LORD BYRON. 



IV. 



Were't the last drop in the well, 

As I gasped upon the brink, 
Ere my fainting spirit fell, 15 

'Tis to thee that I would drink. 



With that water, as this wine, 

The libation I would pour 
Should be — peace with thine and mine, 

And a health to thee, Tom Moore. 20 



July, 181 7. 



WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS 
SUFFERING CLAY/ 



I. 



When coldness wraps this suffering clay, 

Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? 
It cannot die, it cannot stay, 

But leaves its darkened dust behind. 
Then, unembodied, doth it trace 

By steps each planet's heavenly way? 
Or fill at once the realms of space, 

A thing of eyes, that all survey? 



II. 

Eternal, boundless, undecayed, 

A thought unseen, but seeing all, lo 

All, all in earth or skies displayed. 

Shall it survey, shall it recall : 
Each fainter trace that memory holds 

So darkly of departed years. 
In one broad glance the soul beholds, 15 

And all that was at once appears. 

1 This solemn strain of meditative verse reveals Byron's feeling in regard 
to death and the immortality of the soul. 

167 



r68 LORD BYRON. 



III. 



Before Creation peopled earth, 

Its eye shall roll through chaos back ; 
And where the furthest heaven had birth, 

The spirit trace its rising track. 20 

And where the future mars or makes. 

Its glance dilate o'er all to be, 
While sun is quenched or system breaks, 

Fixed in its own eternity. 

IV. 

Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, 25 

It lives all passionless and pure : 
An age shall fleet like earthly year ; 

Its years as moments shall endure. 
Away, away, without a wing, 

O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly, 30 

A nameless and eternal thing. 

Forgetting what it was to die. 



ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY 
THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR.^ 



MissoLONGHi, January 22, 1824. 

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, 
Since others it hath ceased to move : 
Yet, though I cannot be beloved, 
Still let me love! 

My days are in the yellow leaf ; 5 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone! 

The fire that on my bosom preys 

Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 10 

No torch is kindled at its blaze — 
A funeral pile. 

The hope, the fear, the jealous care, 

The exalted portion of the pain 
And power of love, I cannot share, 15 

But wear the chain. 

1 Byron died April 19, 1824, about three months after writing this pro- 
phetic poem. The last stanza is a fit epitaph for the brave poet. 

169 



170 LORD BYRON. 

But 'tis not thus — and 'tis not here — 

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now, 
Where glory decks the hero's bier, 

Or binds his brow. 20 

The sword, the banner, and the field. 
Glory and Greece, around me see! 
The Spartan, borne upon his shield, 
Was not more free. 

Awake! (not Greece— she zV awake! ) 25 

Awake, my spirit! Think through whom 
Thy lifeblood tracks its parent lake. 
And then strike home! 

Tread those reviving passions down, 

Unworthy manhood! — unto thee 30 

Indifferent should the smile or frown 
Of beauty be. 

If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live ? 

The land of honorable death 
Is here: — up to the field, and give 35 

Away thy breath! 

Seek out— less often sought than found — 

A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; 
Then look around, and choose thy ground, 

And take thy rest. 40 



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For the Study of Literature 



Matthews' Introduction to the Study of Annerican Literature 

By Brander Matthews, Professor of Literature in Columbia 
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authors. 

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Seven Annerican Classics, containing choice literary selections from 
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Brooke's English Literature (Literature Primer Series). By the Rev, 
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Cathcart's Literary Reader. A manual of English Literature containing 
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An Introduction to the 

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BY 

BRANDER MATTHEWS 

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Cloth, 12mo, 256 pages - • . Price, $1.00 



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Admirably designed to guide, to supplement, and to stimulate the 
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Bright, clear, and fascinating, it is itself a literary work of high rank. 

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history and conditions of our literature as a whole ; and there is at the 
end of the book a complete chronology of the best American literature 
from the beginning down to 1896. 

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some cases of both. They are also accompanied by each au'^or's 
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Mythology 



Guerber's Myths of Greece and Rome 

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Guerber's Myths of Northern Lands 

Cloth, i2mo, 319 pages. Illustrated .... $1.50 

Guerber's Legends of the Middle Ages 

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By H. A. GUERBER, Lecturer on Mythology. 

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wonderful influence of these ancient myths in literature, numerous and 
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Fisher's Brief History of the Nations 

AND OF THEIR PROGRESS IN CIVILIZATION 

By GEORGE PARK FISHER, LL.D. 

Professor in Yale University 

Cloth, 12mo, 613 pages, with numerous Illustrations, Maps, Tables, and 
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It narrates in fresh, vigorous, and attractive style the 
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connection. 

It explains the nature of historical evidence, and records 
only well established judgments respecting persons and 
events. 

It delineates the progress of peoples and nations in 
civilization as well as the rise and succession of dynasties. 

It connects, in a single chain of narration, events related 
to each other in the contemporary history of different 
nations and countries. 

It gives special prominence to the history of the 
Mediaeval and Modern Periods, — the eras of greatest 
import to modern students. 

It is written from the standpoint of the present, and 
incorporates the latest discoveries of historical explorers 
and writers. 

It is illustrated by numerous colored maps, genealog- 
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sculpture, painting, and portraits of celebrated men, 
representing every period of the world's history. 



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Practical Rhetoric 

A Rational and Comprehensive Text-Book for tlie use of 
High Schools and Colleges. By John Duncan 
QuACKENBOS, A.M., M.D., Emeritus Professor of 
Rhetoric in Columbia University. 



Cloth, i2mo, 477 pages. Price, $i.oo 



'TpHIS work differs materially from all other text-books 
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It first develops, in a perfectly natural manner, the laws 
and principles which underlie rhetorical art, and then 
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processes and kinds of composition. The book is clear, 
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trated with examples, and calculated in every way to 
awaken interest and enthusiasm in the study. A large 
part of the book is devoted to instruction and practice in 
actual composition work in which the pupil is encouraged 
to follow and apply genuine laboratory methods. 

The lessons are so arranged that the whole course, 
including the outside constructive work, may be satisfac- 
torily completed in a single school year. 



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ARNOLD'S SOHRAB AND F 

BURKE'S SPEECH ON CON< 

CARLYLE'S ESSAY ON RO| 

COLERIDGE'S RIME OF THJ 

DEFOE'S HISTORY OF THE 1 

DE QUINCEY'S REVOLT OF THE TART> 

EMERSON'S AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 

RELIANCE, COMPENSATION 

FRANKLIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

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GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD . . . . 
IRVING'S SKETCH-BOOK— SELECTIONS . . . . 

IRVING'S TALES OF A TRAVELER 

MACAU LAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON CHATHAM . 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON ADDISON 

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SCOTT'S THE ABBOT 

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SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS C^SAR 

SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT 

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WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATIONS .... 



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